Red Dwarf Sonic
by DaydreamingDuma
Summary: In another crossover Fanfiction, there exists a version of Sonic's world that's slightly...out of the ordinary. Introducing Sonic as Lister, Shadow as Rimmer, Silver as The Cat, and Metal Sonic as Kryton, four hedgehogs surviving the Red Dwarf Universe.
1. Episode 1 - The End

**Writer's Note - Well, I can't include EVERY episode of Red Dwarf but I've (hopefully) chosen the best ones that can be Sonic-ified...if that's a word. Some of the episodes may also be switched round slightly (for example Red Dwarf episode 5 turns out to be episode 3 of the Sonic Red Dwarf series) but all dialogue is straight from the Red Dwarf series with only minor tweaks here and there for obvious reasons so as to fit within the Sonic universe. Another obvious point to make is that, of course, Sonic and co. are all going to be OOC as they are now the characters from the Red Dwarf series (remember, this is only a parody so please don't be mad!)**

 **\- Duma**

EPISODE 1 - "The End"

The space mining vessel known as Red Dwarf was on a lengthy tour of space, it's purpose to find harvesting material from other planets seeing as Mobius was almost dry. They lived in an age when humans and Mobians co-existed in harmony and worked together to achieve common goals.

Down one of the hallways came two hedgehogs, one leading, the other pushing a maintenance trolley in front of him. The first was dark coloured with red flecks on his quills, handsome in appearance but with such a smarmy, proud expression on his face, reeking of so much vanity and self-importance, that it made your stomach turn over. Behind him, singing merrily, followed a hedgehog that was cobalt blue, bright eyed and also handsome, but with a completely opposite feel, that being one who had clearly spent his lifetime lazing around, disregarding morals and generally becoming a certified 'bum'. These were Shadow and Sonic, the Hedgehogs, creatures that often made their human Captain wish that he had nothing to do with walking, talking animals. As they walked on their way, Sonic still singing, one could easily determine the nature of their relationship by simply watching and listening to them.  
"Sonic," Shadow murmured dryly, "have you ever been hit over the head with a welding mallet? No? Well shut up then!" Rolling his eyes, Sonic resigned himself to the sorry fact that he was stuck with the one creature on this ship that he couldn't stand and that equally couldn't stand him. "Right, Corridor 159..." Shadow began, scribbling down notes in his notepad as they stopped in front of a food dispenser. Sonic came along with the trolley, humming his previous song. "Sonic, shut up!" Shadow cried, staring at him in disbelief, really hoping that the blue twit wasn't going to be pushing his buttons today - a fruitless hope, really.  
"I'm only humming," Sonic whined.  
"Well don't!" Shadow snapped back, returning to his notebook. Unfortunately for Shadow, Sonic had discovered he was deliciously easy to wind up and, with a sparkle of mischief in his green eyes, he lifted his hands and began to slap out a rhythm on his cheeks. "Sonic, don't hum and don't make any stupid sounds with your cheeks." So Sonic began clicking his tongue instead. "Sonic, one more sound of ANYTHING and you're on report, mi-laddo." This was accompanied by a finger waggle. "Now, what job number is this?"  
Sonic just couldn't understand it when Shadow flipped out after he tried mouthing that he wasn't allowed to make a sound. He was even more put out when Shadow filled out a report form against him for 'Obstructing a superior technician by humming, clicking and being quiet.'

Shadow had always said that he wasn't always going to be where he was; he dreamt of passing his engineering exam although Sonic was sceptical.  
"You won't do that 'cause you'll just go in there and flunk again," he said later on, walking back down the corridor.  
"Sonic," Shadow tutted, "last time I only failed by the narrowest of narrow margins."  
"You walked in there and wrote 'I am a fish' 400 times, did a funny little dance and fainted."  
"That's a total lie!"  
"No it's not, Tails told me."  
" _No it's not, Tails told me_ ," Shadow imitated with a whine, "If you MUST know, what I did was that I wrote a discourse on reverse circuits that was too radical, too unconventional, too mould-breaking for the examiner's to accept."  
"Yeah," Sonic nodded, "You said you were a fish."

This was how Sonic and Shadow functioned. They were bunkmates, sharing the same room, smothering one another every minute of the day having been lumped together as working partners. In Shadow's own words, they were 'the lowest of the low'; their task on Red Dwarf was to shuffle around the corridors, making sure all the vending machines weren't out of Kitkats and Crunchies. Their current argument was cut short, however, when Rotor Walrus approached them with a clipboard in his hand. Shadow immediately saluted grandly as Sonic grinned.

"Ah, now Shadow," he greeted, "I was just going through the artifacts and I see you've filed 247 complaints...against Sonic."  
The look of utter smug-ness could not have been found on the biggest Teacher's Pet in the universe. "Yes sir," Shadow smirked.  
"That's 123 counts of insulting a superior technician, 39 counts of deriliction of duty, 84 counts of general insubordination and 1 count of mutiny."  
"Yes, Sir," Shaodw confirmed, still smirking.  
Rotor glanced up at the blue hedgehog questioningly. "Mutiny, Sonic?"  
"Yeah, I stood on his toe," Sonic nodded, tucking into a chili dog that he had managed to snaffle from the cook who had a soft spot for him.  
"Maliciously and with intent to wound," Shadow immediately snarled.  
"It was an accident!" Sonic protested.  
"I put it to you," Shadow sighed, "How is it possible to stand on one small toe by accident? You didn't stand on my toe at all, you stood on my entire paw, thereby obstructing a superior technician in pursuit of vital duty!"  
"The vital duty was that he was going to snap my guitar in half!"  
"Whereupon you leapt from the top bunk onto the whole of my right paw!"  
"All right, that's enough," Rotor interrupted, shaking his head. He'd had to deal with the two hedgehogs on more accounts than he'd like to count.  
"Had it been a crisis situation, Sonic," Shadow went on, "I'd have had to perform my duties hopping! Clearly putting the ship at risk and clearly, therefore, mutiny."  
"...Finished?" Rotor sighed at Shadow, folding his arms across his chest.

He wasn't.

"However I'm not a vindictive man so I don't intend to apply for the death penalty."

Now he was finished.

"There are 169 people on board this ship," Rotor told them, "You, Shadow, are over _one_ hedgehog - why can't you two get on?"  
"Y'see, I try, Sir," Sonic explained, "I'm not an insubordinate man by nature. I try and respect Shadow and everything but it's not easy 'cause he's such a Smeg Head!"  
Shadow stared at him, affronted. "Did you hear that, Sir?" he gasped, "Sonic, do you have any conceptions on the penalty for describing a superior technician as a Smeg Head?"  
It was Rotor Walrus who answered that by laughing. "Oh, Shadow!" he chuckled, clapping him on the shoulder, "You are a Smeg Head."

Tensions may have been a little strained on Red Dwarf for it so turned out that the crew were mourning a death. One of the officers, a human named George Mackintire, had passed away after a lengthy fight with a genetic disease. Sonic and Shadow were milling in their room when his ashes were sent out into space, his final song request 'See you later Alligator' singing out throughout the ship.  
"There goes Mackintire," Sonic sighed from the top bunk, peering out the window, "Bye George. That was George." He pushed himself away from the window and hung his head down over the bunk.  
"Really?" Shadow drolled sarcastically, not looking up at him, "I thought it was Mary Queen of Scots." George's funeral was being filmed for the rest of the crew to see but the screen went dead as Shadow ordered it off.  
"Hey, I was watching that!" Sonic complained.  
"Tough." For as much as Sonic looked for ways to wind up Shadow, so too did Shadow seek ways to make Sonic's life a misery. Holding back the urge to reach down and yank out a dark quill, Sonic sought to vent his frustration elsewhere. "You touch that guitar, Sonic..." Shadow threatened, "I'll remove the E string and gerot you with it."  
"Can I do anything?" the blue hedgehog growled, leaning back over, "Is it okay if I breathe? Can I breathe!?" He then let out a very long, over-exaggurated breath on top of Shadow's head.  
The darker hedgehog jumped to his feet with a glare. "Sonic, I have an exam tomorrow which I intend to pass," he complained.  
"Yeah, by cheating," Sonic sniggered, nodding to where Shadow was trying to write the answers down on the soft pink pads of his paws.  
Mobian animals, the ones that walked and talked as humans did, often wore gloves in order to hide their claws as a way of being civilised and less threatening - so Shadow was sure that any writings would be well hidden. "This is not cheating," he retorted, however, "It is merely an aid to memory, helps me marshal the facts that are already at my command."  
"You're just copying the entire text book onto the skin of your body - why don't you hand your body in and let them mark that?"  
"Sonic, do you think it's easy for someone like me to become an officer?" Shadow asked witheringly, "Someone who _wasn't_ academy educated? Somone who didn't have the right nobby background? Someone who didn't have the right parents?"  
"Didn't have the right parents?" Sonic repeated, surprised, "Whose parents did you have?"  
"MY parents, the wrong parents."  
"I'm just saying though," Sonic sighed, settling himself back on his bunk, "If you can't pass fair and square, why bother?"  
"Well you would, Sonic, because you've got no ambition, no drive - you're perfectly content to be the lowest rank on this ship."  
"I'm NOT the lowest rank on this ship! What about the laboratory mice?" Sonic smiled proudly, "If I tell those mice to do something, they jump to it: 'Yes, Mr Sonic, Sir! Eee eee eee!'"  
Shadow shook his head, almost sympathetically. "Sonic, you are a nothing," he told him.  
"I'm not a nothing! I've got my plan," Sonic told him sharply. "What's that? The plan to get through the entire film of 'The Fox and The Hound' without crying?"  
"No, my 5 year plan. You see I'm going to do 2 more trips, I've been saving up all my pay..."  
"Since when?"  
"Since always. That's why I never buy any tick remover or flea powder or anything like that. Anyway I'm going to have a little farm on South Island, I'm going to have a sheep and a cow and breed horses."  
"...With a sheep and a cow?"  
"No, with horses and horses."  
"On South Island?"  
"Yeah, the prices there are unbelievable."  
"Yes, because they had a volcanic eruption and now most of South Island is three feet below sea level."  
Sonic looked thoughtful for a moment. "It's only three feet, they can wade. So I suppose the animals are going to have to be quite tall."  
"Nice plan, Sonic, excellent plan, brilliant plan!" said Shadow sarcastically, "What about the sheep? What are you going to do, buy water wings? Give them stilts? Better yet, you can cross breed them with dolphins and have leaping mutton!" Shadow then bounced his pen up and down, baa-ing and splashing, "You'll be the first person to produce wet-look knitwear."  
"This is why I never ever said anything to you," Sonic huffed, lying on his bed in a sulk, "'Cause I knew you'd say something like this!"  
"Sonic, you've got the brain of a cheese sandwhich," Shadow smirked and then pretended to swim across the room. "Mornin' Farmer Sonic," he sang in a Somerset accent, as he 'swam' past the bed, "Jus' poppin' down t' th' shops in me submarine, can I buy you anythin'?"

Later on, the Red Dwarf crew held a special 'Welcome Back' party for George Mackintire to which everyone was invited.

Shadow sat alone, hating everyone he was stuck on board with, while Sonic went and milled with his friends on another table. They were laughing and joking and playing stupid trick games with one another while Shadow looked on and sneered. Sonic's closest friend, a little fox called Tails, was always egging him in these things, probably encouraging Sonic to make more problems for Shadow. Just then Captain Robotnik stood up at the head table with a drink in hand. Everyone quietened as he began his speech.  
"Folks, today is a day of both sadness and joy. Sadness for the passing away of George and joy, because George is back with us, albeit his hologram." At the Captain's side sat George Mackintire, smiling shyly, looking just as he had always done whlie he had been alive. The only difference about him was that he now sported a silver letter 'H' on his forehead. "Now some of you might not have travelled with a hologram before so I ask you treat him as a normal man because he is, in every respect, like George," Captain Robotnik went on, "He has George's personality, George's knowledge, memories and experience. Of course he can't lift anything or touch anything so I ask you to cooperate with his requests and please take every care not to walk through him, not even when you're in a hurry - thank you." George was then called for a speech, to which he did, proving that he WAS indeed George, every bit like him in every way.  
"...As you know," he said at the end of his speech, "Knuckles is only capable of sustaining one hologram so, my advice to anyone more vital to the mission than me is, if you die, I'll kill you." Another laugh and a round of applause from everyone.

Knuckles was the name of the Red Dwarf's Master Computer which ran the entire ship. It stood for 'Navigational Unix Computer and Life-Support Engineering System' - the letter K's were silent. He often showed himself around the ship by appearing on screen montiers: a good-looking red echidna, thought to be one of the oldest species of Mobian.  
After the cutting of the cake (which the Captain had to do since George couldn't touch anything), Captain Robotnik made another announcement. "Just one thing before the disco," he said, "Knuckles tell's me that he's sensed a non-Mobian lifeform aboard."  
"Sir, it's Shadow!" Sonic called out, prompting everyone to laugh again.  
"We don't know what it is," the Captain sighed, glaring at the blue hedgehog, "So just be careful, okay?"  
With that, the party was ajourned.

The very next day, Shadow was sat, going over the notes on his four paws.

"F. I. S. H.," Sonic commented, watching him from his bed, "That's how you spell 'fish'. Then you just need to keel over. I'm sure it will all come flooding back to you."  
"De-quill yourself, Sonic," Shadow snorted, using an old-fashioned hedgehog insult. There was a low hum over the intercom.  
" **Will entrants for the Engineers Examination now make their way to the Teaching Room** ," Knuckles announced. Shadow pulled on his jacket and trousers, zipping himself up.  
"Honestly, Shadow, good luck," Sonic sighed and the last thing Sonic saw of him was his pleased face and his little black tail wagging from side to side behind him as he swept from the room.  
After he had gone, Sonic waited a couple more seconds before shutting and locking the door. He then cautiously climbed down from his bunk and pricked his ears to listen for sounds of returning footsteps.

There weren't any.

Smiling delightedly, Sonic rubbed his hands together and, still with an ear still on standby, quietly pulled out a cold hotdog from the bread bin and tiptoed over to his personal cupboard.  
"Jules?" he whispered, slowly opening the cupboard door and moving aside some of his jackets, "Hey? Come on buddy."  
From the bottom of the cupboard, a little snuffle greeted him and a pair of beady eyes blinked up. Sonic reached in and lifted the little creature out, revealing a rather fat, rather sleepy, brown hedgehog. "Come get your food," Sonic smiled fondly, offering the meat to the small animal which ate it hungrily, giving a snuffle of pleasure.

The Drive Room was a hub of activity when Sonic entered, with the robotic Scutters milling about and the crew going about their business. Over at one of the desks sat a pretty pink hedgehog: Amy Rose, or Rosy to her friends.

Amy was a high-ranking officer and he was just a low-ranking technician; Shadow had often told him that his chances of scoring with her were lower than his actual rank on the ship but that had never stopped him from flirting with her whenever he could spare a few seconds.  
"Hi!" Sonic grinned, leaning over her chair, "Where's the Captain's Office?" Amy looked round and giggled.  
"Over there where it says 'Captain's Office', where it's always said 'Captain's Office'," she replied with a smile.  
Sonic may not have had a prominent position on Red Dwarf, but what he did have was charm and a handsome face and, despite herself, Amy Rose thought he was sweet. "So THAT'S the Captain's Office..." Sonic commented to himself and then flashed her another sweet smile, "So how are _you_ then?" he asked.  
"Fine," Amy responded simply, turning back to her work to hide her blush.  
"Do you know what he wants to see me for?" Sonic went on, leaning closer.  
"Yes," Amy grinned, "I think you've been promoted to admiral." Even she could flirt when she wanted to.  
"Oh yeah?" Sonic's voice lowered.  
"Yeah," Amy whispered back, "for your diligence and general devotion to duty." She leant back in her chair so that their faces were only centimeters apart.  
"Sonic!" the Captain called, interrupting the moment. He beckoned the blue hedgehog with one finger as he bid farewell to Amy and shuffled inside the room.  
"You asked to see me, Captain?" Sonic sighed, slouching in front of the desk.  
"Where's the hedgehog?" the Captain asked. Sonic's ears pricked.  
"Which hedgehog, sir?" he answered nervously, "Shadow's doing his exam and Scourge is..."  
"Sonic," the Captain interrupted as he sat down, "not only are you so stupid that you bring aboard an unquarantined animal and jeoprodise every man and woman on board this ship - not only that - but you take a photograph of yourself WITH the hedgehog and sent it to be processed in the Ship's lab. Now I'm going to ask you again: do you have a hedgehog?"  
"No," Sonic replied flatly.  
" _Have you got a hedgehog_?" the Captain pressed, holding up a photograph of Sonic and a little fat hedgehog.  
"...Yes, that one," Sonic groaned, upset.  
"Where'd you get it?"  
Sonic hung his head in shame. "...Archie Moon, two planets back," he sighed.  
"Don't you realise that thing could be carrying anything?" the Captain told him, "Sonic, a loose animal on board this ship could get anywhere, it could get into the air ducts, it could get into Knuckles. A little nibble here and a little nibble there, Sonic, and before you know it we're flying backwards. Now I want that hedgehog and I want it now!"  
"Sir," Sonic murmured, clearing his throat, "Just suppose, I did have a hedgehog - a primitive one, you know - just suppose... What would you do with Jules?"  
"I'd send it down to the medical centre and I'd have it cut up and have tests run on it," came the reply.  
Sonic paused. "...Would you put it back together when you're finished?"  
"Sonic, that hedgehog will be dead."  
"So with respect, Sir, what's in it for the hedgehog?"  
"Sonic, give me that hedgehog!"  
"It's not as easy as that!" Sonic wailed, finally breaking down, "It's mine! He's my best mate, besides Tails. He's going to be coming with me when we get back to Mobius. It's my plan and no-one can get in the way of it, not even you. And I do respect you... Sir."  
The Captain could see the anguish in the Mobian hedgehog's face and he shook his head. "Sonic, do you want to go into stasis for the rest of the trip and forfeit 18 months wages?" he asked with a sigh.  
"No," Sonic replied.  
"Do you want to hand over that hedgehog?"  
"No!"  
The Captain gave him a steely look. "Choose."

The expression on Sonic's face was a mixture of stubborn pride and shame.

"No-one wants to go through with this," Rotor said comfortingly as he escorted Sonic towards the Stasis chambers.  
"It's okay, I can handle it," Sonic cast off lightly, but then stopped as two doctors came along with a stretcher. Lying on top was a serene looking Shadow, eyes closed, breathing gently. "Shadow, are you allright?" Sonic asked, worriedly.  
Clearly, he had passed out during his exam - again. "I can't really remember," Shadow murmured weakly, "I think I did quite well." He was then wheeled off as Rotor prepared the pod.  
"Is this gonna hurt?" Sonic asked cautiously, squinting through the glass window of the door.  
"Haven't you ever travelled interstella?" Rotor asked, surprised to which Sonic said he hadn't, "You don't feel a thing! The stasis room creates a static field of time, so just as x-rays can't pass through lead, time cannot penetrate the stasis field. So although you exist, you no longer exist in time and for you, time itself does not exist. You see, although you're still a mass, you are no longer an event in space-time you are a non-event mass with a quantom probability of zero."  
Sonic blinked at him. "Oh it's as simple as that, is it?" Rotor opened the door for him and Sonic shuffled inside.  
"See you in 18 months," the walrus smiled, closing the door and activating the stasis field. Time no longer had any effect on the blue hedgehog waiting inside.

On the outside, however, time did pass. The months ticked on by, one after the other until...

" **Good morning, Sonic** ," Knuckles spoke over the speakers as Sonic pushed open the door and stepped out into the corridor, " **It is now safe for you to emerge from stasis**."  
"I've only just got in," Sonic said, confused, rubbing his shoulders.  
" **Please proceed to the Drive Room for debriefing** ," Knuckles went on.  
Shrugging, Sonic went on his way, unable to quite put his finger on what was bothering him.

Usually, Knuckles sounded like any ordinary super computer with an IQ of 6000 would but to Sonic he was sounding a little...normal? Almost as though he couldn't quite be bothered to keep up the monotomous, intelligent voice anymore. The ship sounded eerily quiet as Sonic went on his way and every room he poked his head into was empty. The Teaching Room was bare except for little piles of milk white powder in top of the desks.

"Where is everybody, Knux?" Sonic asked, using his nickname for the computer and prodding one of the piles with his finger.  
" **They're dead, Sonic**."  
Sonic stopped short, hand half-way to his mouth. "Who is?" he asked, turning towards the nearest computer screen with wide green eyes.  
" **Everybody, Sonic** ," Knuckles answered.  
Sonic absent mindedly licked his finger. "What, Captain Robotnik?"  
" **Everybody's dead, Sonic**."  
"What, Rotor Walrus?" He poked another pile and licked it.  
" **Everybody's dead, Sonic**."  
"Jet the Hawk?"  
" **They're all dead, everybody's dead, Sonic**."  
The blue hedgehog made his way through the ship, bewilderment all over his face. "Tails isn't, is he?"  
" **Everybody's** _ **dead**_ **, Sonic** ," Knuckles answered, getting impatient.  
"Not Espio."  
" **Gordon Bennet...** " Knuckles groaned, " **Yes Espio -** _ **everybody**_ **, everybody's dead, Sonic**."  
"Shadow?"  
" **He's dead, Sonic, everybody's dead. Everybody. Is. Dead. Sonic**."  
"Wait...are you trying to tell me everybody's dead?"

"How?" Sonic asked, entering the silent and barren Drive Room, face betraying the fact that the news was finally hitting home.  
" **Drive Plate was inefficently repaired** ," Knuckles answered, " **It blew and the entire crew was subjected to a lethal dose of Cabnium 2 before I could seal the air in**."  
Sonic brushed another pile off the nearest chair and sat down at a desk, poking at a different pile. "This is terrible," Sonic murmured, staring around at his surroundings, "and why is it so dirty around here, Knux? What is this stuff?" he sniffed the powder on his fingers and licked it again.  
" **That is Catering Officer Antoine d'Coolet** ," Knuckles replied.  
Sonic's quills almost ripped through his shirt as he immediately spat it out. "I've been eating half the crew!" he cried, rubbing his mouth against his sleeve. "Who's that?" he then asked, pointing to another pile.  
" **That's Captain Robotnik**."  
"And that's Rotor?" Sonic said, pointing to the pile beside it.  
" **No, that's Second Technician Shadow**."  
"...Oh yeah," Sonic joked, "Didn't recognise him without his report book. What was Shadow doing in the Drive Room?"  
" **He was explaining to the Captain why he hadn't sealed the Drive Plate properly**."  
"So wait, Knux..." Sonic muttered, brushing the remains of Catering Officer Antoine d'Coolet onto the floor, "How long was I in stasis?"  
" **Well** ," Knuckles began, " **I couldn't release you until the radiation reached a safe background level..**."  
"How long?" Sonic asked again, more firmly.  
" **3 million years** ," Knuckles admitted.  
"3 million years!?" Sonic cried, eyes unable to widen any further, "...I've still got that library book..." He looked over at the other desk and realisation suddenly dawned on him. "What about Rosy? What about Amy Rose?" he asked, face falling.  
" **She's dead, Sonic**." Sonic's ears drooped and his quills flattened in absolute misery. " **Don't suppose it's any consolation** ," Knuckles quipped, " **but if she were still alive, the age difference would be insurmountable**."  
Sonic wasn't comforted. "But she was part of my plan," he squeaked, "I never got round to telling her but she was gonna come with me to South Island. She was gonna wear a white dress and ride the horses and I was gonna take care of everything else. It was my plan! I planned it."  
" **Well, she won't be much use to you on South Island now, not unless it snows and you need something to grit the path with** ," Knuckles said and had he shoulders, he would have shrugged them.  
Sonic turned to the screen, shocked. "Knuckles!" he cried indignantly, amazed that an emotionless computer could say something so thoughtless.  
" **Sorry** ," Knuckles apologised, " **I'm sorry about that - I've been on my own for 3 million years and I'm just used to saying what I think. I think I've gone a bit peculiar to tell the truth**." His circuit board WAS a bit strained, that was obvious.  
"So everyone's dead," Sonic huffed, "I'm on my own. It's just me."  
" **Well, technically speaking, yes** ," Knuckles agreed.  
"What do you mean, technically speaking?"  
In response, who should come pacing into the room but Shadow, still looking as smarmy as ever.  
"Hello Sonic," he greeted dryly, "Long time no see."  
"Shadow!" Sonic blurted, looking him up and down, "You're a hologram!"  
It was true that Shadow looked the same in every aspect - save for the shiny silver 'H' now on his forehead. "Yes," Shadow nodded patronisingly, "That's because I'm dead. Dead as a can of spam." He then glared at Sonic. "And it's all thanks to you."  
"Me? What did I do?" Sonic asked.  
"If you hadn't kept that stupid hedgehog..."  
"Hey, watch it!" Sonic interrupted with a smirk, "that 'stupid hedgehog' happens to share the same base genes with you."  
Shadow rolled his eyes. "Well," he went on, "if you hadn't kept it and hadn't been sent to stasis, I would have had some help when I was mending the Drive Plate and I wouldn't be dead."  
Sonic just stared at him. "What's it feel like?" he asked quietly.  
Shadow's face softened. "Death? It's like being on holiday with a group of lemmings."  
"No, I mean being a hologram," Sonic said, walking up to him and waving his arm straight through the darker hedgehog's body. There was no physical feeling of Shadow even being there.  
"Do you mind?" he complained as Sonic backed off warily, staring at his hand as though he might have pieces of Shadow stuck to his gloves, "Being a hologram is fine, Sonic. I still have the same drives, the same feelings, the same emotions...but I can't touch anything." He stared at his hands. "Never again will I be able to brush a rose against my cheek, cradle a laughing child, or interfere with a woman in the breeding season."  
"You never used to do any of those things anyway."  
"But I would have done one day, murderer!" Shadow complained.  
"Hey hey hey!" Sonic shouted back at him, "I didn't do anything! It was you who didn't fix the Drive Plate properly!"  
Shadow, however, had turned his back and was now stooping over a lone pile of white powder. "Is this me, here?" he asked, "Me?"  
"Come on Shadow, look on the bright side..."  
"The _bright_ side? WHAT bright side? I'm dead!" His face contorted with sorrow, "I'm composed entirely of light and I'm alone in space with a hog who'd lose in a battle of wits against a stuffed iguana - where's the bright side?"  
Sonic paused. "What's an iguana? And anyway, you're not _dead_ , are you? I mean, you're dead, but you're not _dead_ dead because you're still here, aren't you?"  
"Sonic, I'm not really here! I'm not really ME, don't you see? I'm a computer simulation of me." Shadow pointed at the lone white pile. "That's me there," he moaned, "That pile of albino mouse droppings."  
"Come on..." Sonic tried reasoning, "Lots of people have died. Lots of people have died and gone on to do really really well. You're a hologram, so what?"  
"I suppose you're right, Sonic," Shadow sighed, "I've got to pull myself together...but you've got to help me, you've got to be my hands and my touch."  
"I know the sort of things you like to touch," Sonic shuddered, "No way, Shadow, forget it."  
Shadow turned to glower at him. "Ignoring an superior officer? You're on report, squire..." he went to reach for his report book and stopped, realising that he couldn't touch anything. He scrunched up his face, looking up at the ceiling. "I can't write it down..." he said softly, "...I'll remember it."  
Sonic had just been starting to feel sorry for him, but now he was getting frustrated with him again. "Look, I know it's wrong of me to speak ill of the dead and all that," he groaned, standing up and beginning to walk from the room, "but you're still a Smeg Head."  
"I beg your pardon?" Shadow demanded, eyes glittering dangerously.  
So Sonic repeated it. "I said you're still a Smeg Head."  
"Sonic, do you have any idea of the penalty for describing a _deceased_ superior technician as a Smeg Head?!" Shadow fumed, following Sonic from the Drive Room.

He was still following him around a little later on when, unbeknown to both of them, _another_ hedgehog had climbed its way up from the lower levels and was now dancing around the halls. He was dressed in a sharp suit and looked as though he had just stepped from a hollywood movie.  
"Oo-wee, how am I looking?" he asked himself, digging into his pockets and bringing out a small mirror. "Lookin' nice!" he smiled, flashing his fangs, "No, wait a minute, I'm looking better than nice! I'm looking dangerous!" He laughed and went dancing on again. "Oh what's that? Oh, it's my shadow...even my shadow's looking nice! I'm looking nice, my shadow's looking nice - what a team! We are unbelievable!" He then went on his way, spinning and dancing and kicking his heels and shaking his long white spines.

Sonic and Shadow both practically leapt into the air when they turned a corner and found a mass of white quills dancing his way down towards them. Shadow actually went to grab onto Sonic, but found his arms passing right through. It didn't take long for them to quickly realise that the mass of white spines was actually another male mobian-like hedgehog, with long elaborate quills and a pair of golden yellow eyes. He took in the sight of Sonic and Shadow and immediately went on the defense.  
"Uh-oh!" he grumbled to himself, "Better roll!" He then leapt forward, curling up into a tight ball and rolled away down the corridor, out of sight.  
Sonic and Shadow made a hasty retreat to the nearest room, which turned out to be the Teaching Room that Shadow had sat in for his exam. Feeling a little jumpy, Sonic turned to the computer screen.  
"Knuckles, what WAS that!?" he asked, bewildered.  
" **During the radioactive crisis, Sonic, your hedgehog and her hoglets were safely sealed in the hold and they've been breeding there for 3 million years. The radiation caused future generations of hoglets to grow into the lifeform that you just saw in the corridor**."  
Not so much fazed by the fact that his pet hedgehog had been female all this time, Sonic sat himself down on one of the tables and shook his head. "That thing has descended from my Jules? With THOSE quills?"  
" **I suppose that's what happens after living in radioactive deep space for years** ," Knuckles mused. But Sonic was right back on his feet again when the white hedgehog came rolling in through the door, looking around eagerly. He stopped short when he locked eyes with Sonic and Shadow, bristling in defence.  
"Hello?" Sonic tried saying.  
"Stand back, Sonic," Shadow mouthed and then sprang at the intruder, quills raised. He passed straight through, of course, much to the white hedgehog's amusement.  
"Hey! Clear off, boys!" the white hedgehog warned after a short giggle, "Any girls around here are having my kids and my kids only. You see these genes?" he twirled in place, "These are the genes that are gonna be passed on, not yours!"  
"If you can find a woman on board, matey," Shadow murmured crossly, reentering the room with dignity that did not suggest what had happened a moment ago, "then by all means go ahead; you'll have earned her."

Deeming that they weren't a threat, the white hedgehog allowed Sonic to lead him to the sleeping quarters where he was fed and watered.  
"Where are all your other hedgehog friends then?" Sonic asked curiously, wondering if he was in for a lonely trip in space after all.  
"Who cares!?" Shadow interrupted, "I want it off the ship!"  
"No," Sonic crooned, "He's coming home with us, aren't you Silver?"  
"Silver?"  
"Good name, isn't it?" Sonic shrugged, "So okay, it isn't MY hedgehog, but it's still a hedgehog and he's coming with me to South Island."  
"What makes you think they'll BE a South Island?" Shadow reasoned, "What makes you think they'll even be a Mobius?"  
"Let's find out!" Sonic laughed, "Knuckles, plot a course to Mobius - I'm going home!"

 **Next time...**

 **Episode 2 - Future Echoes**

 **While travelling at light speed, Sonic, Shadow and Silver see snippets of the future appearing all over the ship, including Sonic's supposed death.**


	2. Episode 2 - Future Echoes

EPISODE 2 - "Future Echoes"

The corridor echoed with the sound of humming as Sonic came strolling down to the nearest food vender.  
"Can I helpth you?" the wall machine asked politely.  
Sonic cocked his head on one side. "You've got a lisp," he said.  
"Yeth I know. Thith malfuncthon hath been reported to the skutterth. Thorry for the inconvienienth."  
Sonic shrugged. "All right then. Can you give me a deep fried chili dog with relish and a black coffee?" In reply, the machine whirred and opened a hatch, revealing a pair of black wellington boots. "Your voice isn't the only thing not working," Sonic responded dryly.  
"Yeth I know," the machine replied, "Thith altho hath been reported to the skutterth. Thorry for the inconvienienth."  
"Could you just TRY to give me a black coffee?" Sonic then asked, watching the machine whirr and open it's hatch again. There was a clang as something metallic fell out. "That's a bucket."  
"Thorry."  
Then another noise came down the corridor and a jogging Shadow, decked in full white sports garb, came skipping down the corridor, running on the spot as he came to stop beside Sonic.  
"Morning Sonic, how's life in hippy heaven, you moulding, baboon-bellied space louse?" he asked cheerfully, "So what's the plan for today then, hmm? Slobbing in the morning followed by slobbing in the afternoon and then maybe a snooze before the main evening slob? You're a disgrace to the species." Having announced this, he turned and gaily jogged away. Sonic watched him go, unimpressed.  
"Good morning Shadow," he sighed, giving up on seeing anything resembling a coffee.

A little later on, Sonic was packing a bag, storing things away for his intended trip into stasis. Silver was sat on a stool, nibbling away at dried cat food as he looked through Sonic's photo collection.  
"Who's that guy?" he asked, pointing to one photo.  
"That's my grandmother," Sonic replied, "Great old lady. Got expelled from school once because she looked at the headmaster when I came bottom in French."  
Silver didn't get it so he went on looking through until he gave a snort and bristled his quills. "WHO IS THAT?" he shrieked.  
On the screen, where Silver had been looking through the slideshow of the photos, there was a picture of a smiling, yellow-furred fox.  
"That's my pal, Tails. My best mate," Sonic answered wistfully, stuffing a shirt into a suitcase, "The only good picture I got of him. Camera shy, poor little begger."  
"He's your friend!?" Silver spluttered, arching his shoulders in defense, "No wonder you're so ugly."  
Sonic gave the silver coloured Hedgehog a glare. "What's that supposed to mean? He was quite a good-looking fox actually," he protested.  
"Fox?" Silver repeated with a growl, "What's a fox?"  
Then Sonic sussed that, because Silver had raised himself, he hadn't learnt to break his animalistic instincts - foxes were, after all, a hedgehog's enemy out in the wild.  
"Another animal," Sonic sighed, shaking his head.  
"Ugh...nasty," Silver sneered, wrinkling his nose at the photo, "Look, this...uh...fox...it better not be around here in any place 'cause if he is, I may have to chase him!"  
"Oh yeah?" Sonic smiled, not bothering to tell him that, in the wild, it was the other way round, "You know how big they are? They're about 18 foot long and they got teeth as big as your leg."  
"Yeah?" Silver coughed, getting to his feet and backing away, "Well, maybe I could chase him anyway..." he then legged it down the corridor, leaving Sonic alone.  
"...Wish he WAS around here..." Sonic sighed, scratching his neck and glancing around the room. Then his face fell as his gaze landed on the glass tank on the side. "Aw, look what's happened to Muttski," he groaned, peering into the misty tank where his pet snails were oozing around. One had dried up in an unattractive, shrivelled heap. Of course, they weren't real snails - they were cyborg ones, with slightly organic bodies and metal, robotic shells. After taking him out and fiddling a bit with the wires inside, Muttski slimed its way back to life. "Hey! There you are!" Sonic smiled, returning him to the tank, where he slipped and slid around in his oozy slime, as happy as a mechanical snail could be.  
Returning back to his bunk to continue packing, he barely noticed Shadow come into the room, frowning at Silver who was staring at him in amazement, turning around him and staring at him from all sides.  
"What's _he_ looking at?" Shadow sneered, still coming to terms with the fact that Silver was a person in his own right and not just some simple wild animal to ignore and look down on. He was still in a bad mood from dealing with a frustrated Knuckles and a smart aleck Toaster.  
"Who?" Sonic asked, rolling up a pair of trousers.  
Though Shadow thought himself far too disciplined and civilised to give in to ancient Mobian behaviour, he shamed himself by baring his teeth at Silver and giving a quiet warning growl when the paler hedgehog had done another turn around him, his face frozen in a stunned expression. "That idiotic hog," he growled, straightening his back to appear taller, something that Silver, much to his disgust, had no choice but to respond to.  
Sonic turned to see what was going on just as Silver made a disgruntled retreat out the room, looking over his shoulder with a snooty face. But Sonic wasn't paying attention to what the primitive hedgehog was doing - he was _also_ staring at Shadow in complete amazement.  
Shadow had been one for his self-proclaimed 'imaculate' appearance and had always stated that quills, when styled correctly, were what seperated the men from the boys.  
"Shadow what have you done to your quills?" Sonic asked, stifling a giggle. Instead of red flecks along his black spines, he was now sporting pink ones and instead of them being broad and imposing, they were now hanging down like...well, rather like the female of the hedgehog species often grew their quills.  
"Knuckles did it," Shadow stated, a pleased smirk on his face as he stood tall and proud in the centre of the room, his chest rising as though he thought himself the manliest creature in the world.  
Sonic rolled his eyes, finally understanding; Shadow must have cheesed Knuckles off when asking for his standard quill style that he had to recieve from the computer directly, seeing as he was now dead and composed entirely of light. "Why?" the blue hedgehog asked, eagerly anticipating the answer.  
"I ordered him to," Shadow answered smoothly.  
That's when Sonic let out his first laugh and shook his head. "Looks ridiculous," he muttered.  
"May look ridiculous to you but I like it like this," Shadow retorted, smugly, "I feel like a man!"  
"Yeah and you'd probably get one, looking like that."  
"Nothing wrong with short broad quills, Sonic, gives one a sense of dignity, a sense of discipline."  
"Have you even seen it?" Sonic asked, raising his eye sceptically.  
"I don't need to see it to know I look good," Shadow smiled, turning round to look at his bunkmate, "This is a quill-cut designed for action, not for poncing around in." He moved over to the sink to admire himself. "But you are what you look and I look...like a complete and total girl! Knuckles!" he snarled poisonously.  
The ship's computer, busy trying to navigate light speed, let out a crackle. " **This is a recording - I'm afraid Knuckles is busy at the moment. If you'd like to leave a message, wait until the bleep. Bleep**."  
"Knuckles, this is Shadow, remember me? Shadow!" the dark hedgehog went on ranting, "Shadow the Hedgehog, the poor goit you made look like Tina Turner. I'll see you toast in the fires of hell for this."  
From accross the room, the electrical toaster gave an excited whirr. "Did someone say they wanted toast?" it sang merrily.  
"Shut up!" Shadow snapped and then his ears swivelled as he heard Sonic clip down a case. "And what are you doing?" he demanded, watching the other hedgehog pull it off the top bunk.  
"I'm going into stasis. I told you," he replied, walking towards the door.  
"Stasis?" Shadow repeated, eyes widening as he followed, "What for?"  
"Well Knux suggested it, seeing as we're going through light speed," he explained, dumping the bag down and heading for the Drive Room, "but then I thought, what the heck, why not stay in there until we get back to Mobius?"  
"But..." Shadow squeaked, watching him leave, "that's 3 million years away! You can't leave me alone for 3 million years, I'll go peculiar!" He touched his quills nervously and gulped. "Knuckles," he sighed, "look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. Can I please have my own quills back? Pretty please with sugar on?"

A pause.

" **I'll think about it, Shadow** ," the computer responded.  
Giving the air a very rude gesture, Shadow turned and scampered after his bunk mate who, by now, had propped up his legs on the worksides, looking through some old booklets.  
"Knux was supposed to have told you," he said as Shadow hurried in, his quills now returned to normal, "I thought you didn't mind."  
"Mind? Mind!?" Shadow laughed insanely, "Why should I mind? 300,000 millenia ALONE while you're in suspended animation. I'll be fine! I'll do a crossword book, that shoud kill a couple centuries."  
"Knux can switch you off until we come back out," Sonic suggested, lowering the stasis booklets.  
But Shadow rolled his eyes. "Even better," he scoffed, "Switch me on, switch me off, like I'm some battery powered sex aid."  
"Come on, Shadow, don't give me this!" Sonic groaned, throwing down the booklets and holding his head.  
"Don't give you what, Sonic, I'm dead!" Shadow replied, "Or hadn't you noticed?"  
"I KNOW you're dead! Don't winge on about it! I mean, you're everything you were when you were alive; same personality, same everything."  
"Apart from the miniscule detail that I'm a stiffie."  
"Look, death isn't a handicap like it was back in the olden days. It doesn't screw your career up straight away."  
"Don't know if you've thought about it like this, but if you were interviewing two people for a job, and one of them was dead, which one would you choose? When was the last time you saw a dead newsreader?"  
Sonic paused to think about it and then his face brightened. "...Ah! Channel 27 had a hologram read the news!" he announced victoriously.  
"Oh groovy old Channel 27!" Shadow whooped, voice dripping in sarcasm, "Big smegging deal!"  
"Shadow," Sonic sighed, growing tired of this argument, "if I want to go back to Mobius, I'm gonna have to go into stasis! It's gonna take 4000 years just to turn around! You can't do a three point turn when you're this close to light speed you know."  
"Really?" Shadow sniggered, "Where did you read that? The Ladybird book of Astro Navigation?"  
Sonic rolled his green eyes. "It's true."  
"I know it's true - I do happen to have taken that astro navigation exam - 9 times!" Shadow snipped, "10 if you count the time I had my spasm."  
"You'll only be turned off until we get back to Mobius!" Sonic tried reasoning.  
"...Where you won't need me so I won't get switched back on," Shadow finished for him, acidly.  
"I dunno," Sonic shrugged, "we might be able to cure you. Maybe the Mobian race has made great advances like that while we've been away."  
"Oh yes, I expect they cured death the instant we left the planet," Shadow scoffed, "I expect doctor's surgeries are packed with the dead. ' _Hello Mrs Johnson, take one of these three times a day and you'll soon be living again. Carol, next corpse please!'_ "  
"Well they might!"  
"Yes, Sonic, they might if the planet hasn't blown up."  
"Yeah or if the ants haven't taken over."  
"Well, you'd be in your element if the insects take control," Shadow laughed, "You'd get a decent job at last. You could run for governemnt! Probably even make it as a male model, IF you haven't eaten all of them." With a final sigh, Sonic ended the conversation by getting up and walking out, quills bristled in aggitation. Shadow watched him go, conflicting emotions stirring within him. "Twit," he spat under his breath, looking away in complete sulk.

To prepare for their time in stasis, Silver was organising his thousands upon thousands of blingy outfits and trying to be cruel to himself in working out which one he was going to wear first.

Meanwhile, Sonic was cleaning his fur.

While most considered Sonic a bit of a bum, in truth he was very proud of his brilliant blue fur which was why he often chose to wear clothes - so he could stain his clothes and not his fur underneath. At the moment, he was stood, shirtless, in front of the very mirror that Shadow had his pink-quill discovery and was busy rubbing a slightly soapy flannel through the peachy down on his chest. Just as he was preparing to twist his head round to clean some of the spines on his back, there was a bright light outside the window and all of Red Dwarf shuddered, nearly throwing Sonic off his feet.  
"What was that flash?" he asked the air, clearly adressing the computer.  
" **We've broken the light barrier 22 hours early** ," Knuckles answered, his red face appearing on the computer screen. He sounded like he was being bounced around and his eyes kept darting about.  
"Oh..." Sonic mumbled, "...everyone all right?"  
" **I...I can't do it** ," Knuckles randomly moaned, " **I can't cope. We're going at the speed of light**."  
"Knux," Sonic said slowly, "is everyone allright?"  
" **No,** _ **I'm**_ **not**!" Knuckles whined, " **I thought I could navigate at light speed but I can't wrap me head round it**." His head then spasmed, looking as though he had actually tried ducking, " **Gordon Bennet! That was a close one**!" he chuckled nervously.  
"What's the problem?" Sonic asked, confused, "You're supposed to have an IQ of 6000."  
It wasn't hard to see that, since the last time Knuckles was operational, some 3 million years ago, he hadn't been nearly as clueless as he was now.  
" **We're travelling faster than the speed of light** ," the super computer answered with a sneer, " **That means by the time we see something, we've already passed through it. Even with an IQ of 6000 it's still brown trousers time. I'd better go**." With that, the holographic face was gone.  
Sonic shrugged and turned to face the mirror again, swirling the flannel in the warm water as he quietly sang under his breaht. _"...Let me show you just what I'm made.._." he stopped as he realised that his reflection in the mirror wasn't exactly doing what it should be doing. As in, it was almost as though it were no longer a mirror and more like a film reel...of Sonic still washing, although, of course, Sonic himself had stopped to stare. The Sonic in the mirror had pulled out a loose quill and a second Shadow had appeared beside him, staring back at Sonic through the mirror as though he were a zoo exhibit.  
"Shadow! Shadow!" he yelled over his shoulder, rubbing his shoulders in discomfort. He reached round and pulled out a loose quill just as Shadow came running in, standing beside him.  
"What is it?" he asked, a slight touch of genuine concern in his voice.  
"You see anything weird in that mirror?" Sonic asked, pointing at the mirror.  
Shadow stared at it for a while, his keen eyes glazing over every inch. "...That's you, you ugly gimp!"  
"No it was..." But when Sonic looked again, he realised that the mirror had returned to normal now that the real Sonic and Shadow had seemingly caught up with their reflections. "...it was really odd. Forget it, it doesn't matter," Sonic sighed, shaking his head, deciding that Shadow wouldn't believe him if he told him.  
"What doesn't matter?" Shadow asked but Sonic shook his head again and waved a hand.  
"Forget it."  
"Fine!" Shadow huffed, "Well, if you have any more problems with nothing and things that don't matter, just scream out my name hysterically and I'll come pelting down the corridor."  
Saying this, the dark hedgehog promptly stormed off, but not without making a rude face at the back of Sonic's head.

Silver came pushing his clothes rack of suits down the corridor, humming away happily as he strutted behind them, stopping in front of a stunned Sonic.  
"What are you doing?" the blue hedgehog asked increduously, staring at the tightly packed row of suits and outfits of varying colours and patterns.  
"I'm doing what you said to do," Silver answered simply, looking pleased with himself.  
"I said take a few essential basics you couldn't bear to leave behind," Sonic told him.  
"Right!" Silver nodded, "These are all I'm taking - just these and the other ten racks."  
Sonic felt a velvet sleeve of one of the jackets. "You can't take all of this," he sighed, "there's no room."  
Silver frowned and looked at the rack of clothes, deep in thought. "...Okay...then, I'll leave...um...this!" he pulled out a small red satin hankerchief, "I'll just have to do without it."  
Sonic shook his head and planted his hands on his hips. "You can take two suits and that's it."  
"Two suits!?" Silver shrieked, "Then I'm staying!"  
"You can't stay. By the time I come out, you'll be dead."  
"Two suits IS dead," Silver huffed, crossing his arms. As Sonic walked back to the Drive Room, Silver turned to watch him. "Hey!" he called after him, "if I cut off my leg and leave that behind, can I take three?"  
"We're going into stasis in ten minutes," Sonic shouted back down the corridor, "I'll meet you in the sleeping quarters."

Turning back to the Drive Room, Sonic caught sight of Shadow entering from the doorway on the other side.  
"Yo, Shadow," he said, "I've been thinking." Shadow looked confused.  
"What?" he asked.  
"You know, with going into stasis and everything."  
"How did I do what?"  
Sonic stopped and frowned at him as he tilted his head on one side. "...What do you mean?" he inquired, a little puzzled, especially as Shadow didn't seem to be looking at him when he spoke.  
"Sonic, don't be a gimboid," the dark hedgehog suddenly scoffed.  
"I'm not being a gimboid!" Sonic protested but was completely thrown when Shadow turned away from him, looking at the doorway he had come through, clearly having a conversation with someone he couldn't see.  
"I've just been in the library thinking," Shadow was saying with a sigh, "and I've decided...Shut up!" Sonic jumped - who was Shadow talking to? "As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, I've decided that when you go into stasis, I'm going to stay behind, I want to be left on."  
"What, on your own for the rest of your life?" Sonic asked to a Shadow who wasn't even looking at him.  
Shadow was looking confused again. "What things?" he asked the thin air.  
"Eh?" Sonic tried waving his hand in front of Shadow's face but he got no response other than:  
"I said WHAT?"  
"What's going on?" Sonic gulped, wondering why he was suddenly invisible and why he couldn't see whoever it was Shadow was talking to. "You are space crazy!" Shadow then decided with a laugh.  
"I'M space crazy!?" Sonic cried, "You're the one who's space crazy!"  
There was a pause before Shadow shrugged his shoulders. "Well it probably IS deja-vu, it certainly sounds like it," he told the air. Then there was another hesitation, just as if he were listening to an answer, before he shook his head and walked away, leaving through the same door Sonic had just used. Sonic hopped on over, hoping to catch sight of him as he left but he couldn't see him anymore. He turned, utterly bewildered, and jumped a mile when he discovered Shadow walking in through the other door - AGAIN.  
"AH! Shadow! I've just seen you walk outta that door!" he yelled, throwing himself back. Shadow looked confused.  
"What?"  
"How did you do that?" Sonic asked, looking from Shadow to the other door.  
"How did I do what?" asked the hologram, tilting his head on one side.  
"Just that second - you walked out of that door!"  
"Sonic, don't be a gimboid!" Shadow scoffed.  
"I swear, on my grandmother's life, I just saw you walk out of that door!" Sonic insisted, pointing before hurrying over to the other door, "And then you came in this one!"  
Shadow had turned to watch him. "I've just been in the library thinking," he sighed, "and I've decided..."  
"Shadow, I'm telling you!" Sonic cried.  
"Shut up! As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, I've decided that when you go into stasis, I'm going to stay behind, I want to be left on."  
That was when Sonic stared at him in amazement. "Shadow, you've come in and said exactly these things!" he gasped.  
"What things?" Shadow asked.  
"You said that!" Sonic nodded.  
"I said WHAT?" Shadow said in exasperation, holding out his hands.  
"And that!" Sonic went on, "You said that!"  
"You are space crazy!" Shadow laughed, putting his hands to his side again.  
Sonic dug his hands into his pockets, re-living the entire conversation. "And then you said, 'well it probably is deja-vu,'," he mumbled in a whiney voice.  
Shadow merely shrugged. "Well it probably IS deja-vu, it certainly sounds like it."  
Frowning, Sonic turned away and nodded his head to the door. "Go on then, shake your head and walk out," he muttered. Which Shadow promptly did, leaving by the door that Sonic had now seen him walk out of twice. Then it struck Sonic:

Shadow had been talking to HIM.

The invisible person that Sonic couldn't see in the Drive Room had been him. He instantly dashed after the hologram. "Shadow, listen - would you just listen?" he called.  
Shadow, on the other hand, had very little interest in Sonic's peculiar behaviour. First it was the mirror which, Sonic claimed, had nothing wrong with it. Now it was this.  
"My tooth!" a shout came from down the corridor as Silver went sprinting past, one paw to his mouth, "My tooth! I think I lost my tooth!"  
"Silver wait!" Sonic cried, stopping as a pale hedgehog went hurling passed them in one direction and a dark hedgehog went storming off in another, "Shadow, listen!" Deciding that Silver was more likely to bite him than a hologram was, Sonic followed Shadow. In the sleeping quarters, they discovered... Silver - with his paws inside the tank of cyborg snails.  
"I'm gonna eat you little snail-ey," he sang, "I'm gonna eat you..!" Then he noticed Sonic and Shadow, "Oh! Uh...ah, I was just making sure your snails were okay, I wasn't going to eat them!" He couldn't work out why both hedgehogs were staring at him.  
"He just walked passed us!" Shadow exclaimed, looking down the corridor.  
Sonic scratched his quills thoughtfully. "It must be something to do with light speed," he pondered.  
"Knuckles," Shadow asked out loud, "what's going on?"  
"It's light speed, I bet it is."  
"Is your name Knuckles?" Shadow growled to which Sonic childishly mimicked him,  
" _'Is your name Knuckles_?'"  
"Knuckles!" Shadow called, a bit louder, as Silver slunk miserably from the tank. Because he had only learnt from wild hedgehogs, he still saw snails and slugs and worms and things as edible food, which Mobian hedgehogs, while still able to eat (and enjoy) them, had learnt to leave alone as it was deemed 'primitive' behaviour and not socially acceptable. So Silver was feeling cheated from a meal right about now.  
" **Hmm**?" Knuckles' weary voice came over the speakers as his face appeared on the screen.  
"What is going on?" Shadow asked, still a little sore about being given lady-like quills by the computer before hand.  
" **Look** ," Knuckles replied, also still sore about what Shadow had said to him that lead to giving him lady-like quills, " **I'm a tenth generation, AI, hologramic computer, I'm not your mum**."  
"Yes," Shadow growled sarcastically, "fantastic."  
" **Well what do you want THIS time**?" Knuckles asked, smirking, " **A hand with your homework? Or would you like me to sew little nametags to your PE kit**?"  
"Knuckles," Shadow said slowly, "watch my lips: What. Is. Hap-Pen-Ning?"  
"With the mirror and Silv and everything?" Sonic added for clarification.  
" **Oh that** ," the computer nodded, " **You're seeing future echoes, didn't I explain this to you**?"  
"What are future echoes?" Shadow asked. Silver had perched himself on Sonic's bunk, swinging his legs down.  
" **How simple do you want this**?" Knuckles asked to which Shadow hesitated a moment to think about it.  
"Uh..so Sonic can understand it," he answered.

A pause.

" **...Oh dear**."  
"It's difficult, I know."  
" **Well** ," Knuckles tried explaining, " **we're travelling faster than LS, right**?"  
"What's LS?" Sonic groaned, getting to his feet.  
"Light speed," the talking Toaster, from accross the room, chipped in smugly.  
"Swot bot," Sonic hissed; he and Shadow had never liked that proud little toaster.  
" **Consequently** ," Knuckles went on, " **you're catching up with things you're about to do before you've actually done them**."  
"Ah, so we're seeing bits of the future?" Shadow then said, looking as though he were understanding.  
" **Yes**."  
"See? I told you it was light speed!" Sonic chortled proudly, "You should have asked me."  
"Can they see us?" Shadow then asked.  
"Of course not," the Toaster drawled in a belittling tone, just as fed up with them as they were with him. No-one paid the setinent appliance any attention.  
"So, wait..." Sonic continued, "Are you saying that Silver is going to break his tooth sometime in the future?"  
" **Yes, I didn't think you wanted it THIS simple**."  
"Hey!" Silver protested, "Ain't nobody gonna break MY tooth."  
Shadow then asked, "How long is this going to last?"  
" **Until the reverse thrust takes effect and we drop below light speed** ," Knuckles replied, matter-of-factly.  
Shadow had paced a few laps around the room but he now stopped and was staring at the wall. "...What's that photograph?" he asked quietly, narrowing his eyes at one of poloroids that made up Sonic's collection of photos by his bunk.  
"It's me and Jules, isn't it?" Sonic replied, looking fondly at the infamous photo of himself holding his pet hedgehog, which turned out to be pregnant. That had been the photo that got him into trouble and, consequently, saved him from being wiped out by Shadow's Plate Drive disaster.  
"No," Shadow said, pointing, "the one with the babies."  
"Babies?"  
Sure enough, among the photos there was a small glossy image of Sonic holding two hoglets, both as blue as he was.  
"Never seen it before!" Sonic said, moving towards it to get a better look.  
"Knuckles," Shadow called, "is this what you were calling a future echo?"  
"Yes of course it is," the Toaster decided to answer and then added a quiet, "Bozo," under his non-existance breath.  
"Two babies?" Sonic murmured, touching the photo, "How do I get two babies?"  
There was no doubt that they were his; Sonic's blue colouring was extremely rare, even back when there were more Mobians around. In fact, doctors had estimated that he was the only hedgehog of his colouring left. Which left the question...who had helped make the two babies? Sonic glanced over to Silver and Shadow, who both looked at each other's crotches sceptically; as far as they were concerned, everyone on Red Dwarf was male...they presumed.

The trip into stasis had been considerably delayed by this new discovery but it wasn't long before Sonic decided he'd wasted enough time and he was heading off to go and remind Silver that he was only to bring two suits with him. In the hallway, the Skutters, Red Dwarf's small cleaning and matienence robots, approached Sonic, whirring and clicking. One had a note in it's small, grasping hand.  
"What's this guys?" Sonic asked, taking the note and reading it out loud: 'Don't go into stasis, please don't leave us with Shadow'?" The Skutters whined and dipped their claw heads to nod. "I'm sorry, guys, I've got to, we need you," Sonic sighed, "I've got to get back to Mobius... Oh, don't do that!" The two Skutters had started swinging their armed necks back to hit their heads against the wall. "I don't care what it's like," Sonic went on, referring to Mobius, "it's got to be better than this. I don't care if the orcas have taken over..." He was cut off, however, by the whole ship shaking and temporarily being thrown into a second's darkness as a loud _BOOM_ was heard from the Drive Room. "WHAT WAS THAT!?" Sonic yelled to no-one in particular, clutching his hat and giving into the one ability he had been ordered to never use: his supersonic speed.

Another boom was added as Sonic, living up to his name, zoomed down the corridor and discovering a very pale, thunderstruck Shadow standing rigidly by the consoles.  
"What was that?" Sonic demanded, looking around but seeing nothing out of the ordinary.  
"Brace yourself for a bit of a shock, Sonic, but I just saw you die!" Shadow blurted, staring at the ground with wide eyes.  
"WHAT!?" Sonic screeched, his quills bristling.  
"I did tell you to brace yourself," Shadow reasoned but Sonic was still reeling.  
"You didn't give me much of a chance!"  
"I gave you ample bracing time."  
"No you didn't, you didn't even pause!"  
"Well, I'm sorry! I've just had a rather nasty experience! I have just seen someone I know die in the most hideous, HIDEOUS way!"  
"Yeah!" Sonic cried, thumping his chest, "ME!"  
Shadow pointed at the consoles. "You were fiddling around with the navi comm..."  
"I dont wanna know! I DON'T wanna know!" Sonic shouted, covering his ears.  
Shadow blinked at him. "You don't want to know how you died?" he asked increduously.  
"NO!" Sonic snapped back loudly, slumping down in a seat. He then hesitated. "Was it quick?" he timidly asked.  
"Well, I wouldn't say it was SUPER fast, like how fast you can get sometimes," Shadow smirked, making a show of putting his finger to his chin, "I mean, not if you count the thrashing around and the agonised squealing."  
Sonic glared at him, one sharp fang revealing itself as his upper lip curled up on one side of his mouth. "You're really loving this, aren't you?" he growled.  
Shadow looked mock offended. "What a horrible thing to say!" he gushed, but truth be told there was a sadistic part of him that did like to torture Sonic in whatever way possible.  
"It was definitely me?" the blue hedgehog asked, uncertainly.  
"Oh yes," Shadow nodded, looking very sure of himself.  
Sonic shook his head again. "I don't wanna know," he moaned, then looked up, "How old did I look?"  
Shadow cocked an eyebrow. "How old are you now?"  
"25 - how old did I look?"  
"Erm...mid-twenties," he answered, witholding the urge to giggle.  
"SMEG!" Sonic roared, jumping up and kicking the chair, "I'm not ready! I'm not smegging ready!"  
"You did seem surprised," Shadow agreed, not very helpfully.  
"Ah!" Sonic suddenly pounced, "Did you actually see my face?"  
"You were wearing a hat, but it was definitely you."  
Hearing that, Sonic ripped off his hat and threw it to the ground as though it were contagious. "Well there you go - I won't wear a hat," he snarled, kicking it away from him, "Can't happen without a hat, can it? I can live without a hat!"  
"Sonic," Shadow gently said, "it HAS happened! You can't change it any more than you can change what you had for breakfast yesterday."  
"No, it hasn't happened, has it?" Sonic desperately reasoned, "It has 'will-have, going to have happened' happened, but hasn't actually 'happened-happened yet' happened, actually."  
"Poppycock," Shadow retorted, "It will be happened, it shall be going to be happening, it will be wasn't event but could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that." ( **Actual dialogue - I swear!)** He folded his arms and raised his head, a triumphant gleam in his red eyes, "Your bucket's been kicked, baby."  
"Says you," Sonic huffed, slumping down again.  
"Says me and Albert Einstein, thank you very much," Shadow corrected, "Albie and I happen to agree on this one. It's called the theory of relativity."  
"Right okay, okay..." Sonic mumbled, getting to his feet once more, a glimmer of an idea in his mind, "Right...Silver broke his tooth in a future echo, right? Now if I can stop him breaking it..."  
"Can't be done," Shadow quipped from behind him.  
"...Then I can stop me from dying!"  
"Can't be done," Shadow quipped again.  
"Now how would Silver break his tooth?" Sonic said thoughtfully, ignoring Shadow in the background who had now pretended to hoist an imaginary coffin onto his shoulder and was solemnly walking around the room humming the funeral march, "He'd have been eating something... Eating something hard..." Then he stiffened. "My robot snails! He'd have been eating my robot snails!" he cried, "Knuckles, where's Silver!"  
" **Just going into your sleeping quarters, Sonic** ," the ship's computer replied.  
"Oh smegging hell!" Sonic screeched, bolting for the hallway with Shadow right behind him, still being the devoted coffin bearer to his bunkmate's imaginary future coffin and now reverting to a slightly sped up version of the funeral march.

Silver had just waltzed into the room (quite literally). "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm back and feeling good," he announced to the empty area, "How am I looking?" he whipped out a handheld mirror, "Good! You know, sometimes I wish I was someone else - then I could kiss me! Now I think I'll investigate..." With a smooth slide, he was beside the tank, "These! Hee! One little snail-ey!" He lifted the lid and lowered in his paw, searching for the large one he had his eye on. Plucking it from under a piece of bark, he held it in his fingers and grinned victoriously. "Yeah yeah, I'm gonna eat you little snail-ey!" he sang, licking his lips.  
But then several pounds of blue fur descended on him with a cry.  
"Silver!" Sonic screamed, wrestling the other hedeghog and causing them both to go careening head first into the desk as they groped one another's paws. Finally, Sonic wrenched the bewildered snail from Silver's grasp and held it up above him with a shout of triumph. "Yes!" he hollered, "I got the snail! I got the snail! I'm not gonna die! I'm not gonna die!"  
Silver, meanwhile, straightened up firmly, visibly fuming. "Hey!" he hissed, "You creased my suit!" Then he paused and felt his mouth. "My tooth!" he shrieked, "No, my tooth! I think I broke my tooth!" He then ran from the room, screeching about his tooth, leaving Sonic behind to wallow in self-pity and crushing defeat.  
It was completely the wrong time for Shadow to poke his smug face around the door, beam at his bunkmate's crest-fallen countenence, and say, "Sonic, allow me to be the first to offer my commiserations."  
Sonic gazed at him like a rejected puppy. "You're really _really_ loving this, aren't you?" he whimpered miserably, hanging his head.  
"Come on," Shadow told him comfortingly, putting on an imitation of Sonic's voice as he quoted him, "' _death isn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days'_."  
"Yeah, you're right," Sonic agreed, looking decidedly confident all of a sudden, "There's always some good in every situation."  
"Absolutely, Sonic!" Shadow nodded, smirking, "And in this case, you're about to do the largest split you'll ever do in your life."  
Sonic stared at him, horrified. "I get blown up?" he cried in anguish.  
Shadow wrinkeld his nose. "Bits of you do."  
"It's not fair," Sonic whined, "There's loads of things I've never done. Like...I've never had a beef chili dog. And I've never read..." He thought about this and simply gave up, "A book. And I wanted to have a family! And I wanted to have loads of practice in the things you've gotta do to MAKE a family."  
Witnessing this heart-broken lament, Shadow lifted his head. "Knuckles," he murmured, "I'd like to send an eternal memo. Black border. It begins - 'Sonic the Hedgehog, condolences in your passing away...now what's that poem?...Ah: _Now weary traveller, rest your head, for just like me, you're utterly dead_.'"  
Before Sonic could make a witty remark to him, Knuckles sounded an alert. " **Emergency! Emergency**!" he warned, " **There's an emergency going on**."  
"What is it, Knux?" Sonic sighed, rubbing his face.  
" **There's an emergency, Sonic** ," Knuckles explained, " **The navi comm is overheating and I need help in the Drive Room**."  
Sonic felt his blood freeze as Shadow clapped his hands. "Oooooooooooh..." he sang merrily, dancing about.  
With absolute calm, Sonic got up and sighed once more. "...Well, Number 001," he murmured, "your time is up. Okay, what was I wearing?"  
"That jacket and that t-shirt," Shadow replied, pointing to Sonic's current clothes eagerly.  
Sonic nodded with a serious expression and then, taking up a hat, settled it on his head, around his ears. "You said it yourself," he said, "I can't stop it. So let's get it over with." He then took up a broken piece of piping and headed for the door.  
"Uh...what's that for?" Shadow asked, nodding to the pipe.  
The blue hedgehog held it up threateningly. "I'm going out the same way I came in; screaming and kicking."  
"You can't whack Death on the head!"  
"If he comes near me," Sonic promised, "I'm gonna rip his tail off!"

The Drive Room had never felt so cold when Sonic stepped inside, eyeing the very consoles he had passed by so many times.  
" **It can't cope with the influx of data at light speed** ," Knuckles voice was explaining, " **Could you hook it up to the drive computer?"** The consoles were all sparking about and groaning, popping and crackling which didn't instil the greatest confidence.  
Sonic picked up the navi com box and set it down on the side, reching for the appropriate wires and plugging them in, one by one. "Six..." he counted, as it started to hum in an ominous tone, "five..." Shadow poked his head in through the doorway, grinning and holding his hands over his ears. "Four..." Sonic went on, ignoring him, "three..." The humming was getting louder, as though it were building up to something. "Two..." The noise was unbearable and Sonic closed his eyes, wincing as he plugging in the last lead. "ONE!" The noise died and the consoles stopped sparking. Gingerly, Sonic opened his eyes to find that he was very much not dead. "I did it!" he laughed, pumping his fists in the air, "I'm not gonna die! AH" He was interrupted by Silver who jumped him from behind.  
"You broke my tooth!" he screeched, promptly beating him up.

"It'll probably happen tomorrow or Thursday," Shadow was saying, in a perfect sulk.  
"Maybe it won't happen at all," Sonic merely grinned, stepping beside him with a bounce.  
"It was YOU!" Shadow insisted, walking back into the sleeping quarter, "I saw you, I'm sure of it!" Then he stopped as he realised Sonic wasn't entirely listening.  
On Sonic's bunk, lounging back, was an old hedgehog, unmistakeably Sonic judging by the blue colouring, slightly fading into pale blue around his face.  
"Hey Sonic..." he murmured quietly, his voice weak, "It's me...I mean you...I mean... I am you..." Sonic shuffled closer to his older self, amazement written on his face. "This is you, age 171," his future self went on, wrapping his clothes around his frail frame, "I know you're there. Because when I was your age, I saw me at my age telling you what I'm about to tell you. Now you've got to tell you when you get to be me."  
"Thank heavens you've still got all your marbles," Shadow grinned.  
"I've got to tell you," Future Sonic croaked, "about Prower."  
Shadow immediately looked to Sonic inquisitvely, "Who's Prower?"  
"I was always going to name my second son, Prower," Sonic murmured, "As in, Miles Per Hour."  
"Your second son?" Shadow frowned, "What were you going to name your first son?"  
"Miles. As in, Miles Per Hour."  
"It wasn't you that Shadow saw in the drive room," his future self continued, beginning to shake, "It was Prower."  
Green eyes shining, Sonic slowly faced his bunkmate. "Shadow, you saw my _son_ die!" he cried.  
"Never mind this tot, what about me, old hog?" Shadow went on, pressing forward to beg at the edge of the bed, "What happens to me? Do I become an officer?"  
"I'm gonna have two sons!" Sonic smiled, "Isn't that fantastic?"  
"One of them dies," Shadow pointed out.  
Sonic, however, shrugged. "Everyone dies," he replied, "You're born and then you die. The bit in the middle is called life and that's still to come!"  
"Look," his older self faintly spoke, "go get your camera, you haven't got much time. Get your camera and run to the medical unit. Run."  
"What about me?" Shadow went on pleading, gripping at the bunk sheets, "What happens to me?"  
"He can't hear us," Sonic reminded him, "he's from the future."  
"Yes but if I ask you now, you can remember it and when you get to be him, you can tell me!" Shadow reasoned. His attention was thus diverted when Old Sonic stirred and called his name.  
"Shadow? You wanted to know what happened to you? Come closer..."  
Shadow edged nearer, hopefully.  
"Closer..." Shadow came closer, anticipating the answer.  
But then the older Sonic grinned maliciously and laughed, his voice echoing as he faded out of existance. "You smegging Faker!" Shadow hollered at the empty bunk before wheeling around and pointing an accusing finger at Sonic. "No, YOU smegging Faker! You're all Fakers! I'm surrounded by smegging Fakers!"  
Sonic, meanwhile, picked up his camera and scarpered.  
Now left with no-one else to screech at, Shadow shouted to the air, "Knuckles, you're a Faker!"  
" **I'm a what**?"  
"You heard!"

Down by the medical unit, Sonic was waiting with his camera. Shadow, after many minutes to calm down, had joined him.  
"What's happening, Knux?" Sonic asked, remembering his older self, "Am I going to see my funeral or something?"  
" **Look, the faster we go, the more into the future the future echoes are** ," Knuckles explained, " **And now, since we've just started to slow down, the future echoes are nearer to the present. Clear?** "  
Sonic frowned. "No," he admitted.  
" **Tough**."  
"What I don't understand," Shadow said thoughtfully, "is how you're able to get two sons without a woman on board."  
"Neither do I," Sonic smiled, "But it's gonna be a laugh finding out!"  
Just then, the medi doors opened and another Sonic appeared, carrying two blue hoglets. "I can't see you but I know you can see me," he suddenly announced, turning to face the present Sonic and Shadow, "These are your two sons, this is Miles and this is Prower. Stop crying and say cheese boys."  
With that, Sonic took a photo and hung it up on his wall.

 **Next time...**

 **Episode 3 - Confidence and Paranoia**

 **Sonic gets sick and his hallucinations manifest themselves into physical forms - including his confidence and his paranoia.**


	3. Episode 3 - Confidence and Paranoia

EPISODE 3 - "Confidence and Paranoia"

It was the second time that Sonic had tried watching the film. The first time, he had been interrupted by a bored Knuckles claiming that he had read every book in existance and was now utterly bored. He had then requested that Sonic deleat all memories of any Agitha Christie novel just so he could read them again. Hoping that it would keep him occupied for another few days, Sonic was trying to get back into his film, tearing up at how lost and alone Todd the fox looked as he desperately tried to find shelter from the rain, his heart utterly breaking from having just been released into the wild by his devoted human caregiver... Then Shadow swanned himself in and ruined it, turning it off with a flourish.  
"Had a good day, Sonic?" he asked cheerfully, as Sonic buried his face into his pillow with an anguished moan, "Scrummed enough chockies? Watched enough drivvel, have you?" Shadow turned and smirked at his bunkmate's appearance. "Look at you - you're turning into a sad middle-aged woman," he laughed, "Next thing you know, you'll be varnishing your claws and buying girdles."  
"Oh yeah?" Sonic growled in irritation, "And what have you done that's so great?"  
"I've acheived 17 things today from my daily goal list," Shadow retorted with a smug grin, "Whereas you've never acheived anything ever in your entire life."  
"Actually, I've been up to the officer's block."  
Shadow wheeled around, eyes wide, all traces of a smile gone. "When?" he demanded in a shrill voice.  
"This morning," Sonic replied, biting the loose sheath from one of his claws.  
"But it hasn't been decontaminated!" Shadow protested.  
"You said it had last week!" Sonic cried.  
"No, I said it was on last Thursday's daily goal list."  
"And you haven't done it yet?"  
"Tomorrow. It's on tomorrow's daily goal list. Item 24, right after 'Learn Portugese'."  
Sonic rubbed his face and groaned again. "Thanks a lot," he muttered.  
Shadow turned back to examine himself in the mirror. "Why were you mooching around up there anyway?" he asked, his concern now spent.  
"I was looking for Amy Rose's dream recorder," Sonic told him and a small smile appeared on his face, "She dream about me 3 times, you know - it was in the log."  
"So?" Shadow scoffed, "Clean my teeth, Knuckles."  
"I mean, it must _mean_ something," Sonic reasoned, "You don't dream about someone you don't feel something for."  
Shadow looked to be in a grimace as an invisible holographic toothbrush went about cleaning his holographic teeth. "Sonic," he gurgled, with his mouth full, "I once had a dream about a baboon - it doesn't mean I want to go to bed with it. Trust me, you want to take a good long look at yourself. Then you'll see just how ridiculous you appear to other people."  
"If I could talk to Amy for just one second," Sonic mumbled, "I might be able to find out." He had tried, previously, to persude Shadow into turning himself off temporarily so that he could talk to Amy's hologram instead but the grouchy hedgehog had said no, claiming that Sonic then wouldn't let Knuckles turn him back on again.  
"If you were like me, you wouldn't have these problems," Shadow was saying, rubbing his muzzle.  
"Come on, Shadow, the only reason you knocked around with those twits from the Love Disbelievers Society is 'cause you could never get a date," Sonic huffed.  
"No it wasn't," Shadow bit back, "I happened to agree with their philosophy that love is a sickness that holds you back from your career and makes you want to spend all your money."  
"You could never get a date because you let your mum buy all your casual clothes."  
"There was nothing wrong with my casual clothes!"  
"Your tousers were so short that when you crossed your legs, you could see your knees."  
"What about Yvon Magruder, that was a date."  
"She had been hit on the head with a wench! She had concussion."  
"That had nothing to do with it, she was crazy about me."  
"Yeah, she kept calling you Norman."  
"She went to bed with me."  
"Because she had wonky vision and she thought you were somebody else." Sonic shook his head, "Face it, Shadow, you don't know what love is."  
"Oh yes I do," Shadow replied, "Love is a device invented by bank managers. Lights." The lights dimmed as he climbed onto the lower bunk, preparing to go to sleep. Sonic also settled down, his face softening.  
"Love is...love is what makes us different from animals," he said, "Wild, feral, primitive animals, I mean, you know, the smaller ones that still feel comfortable defectating wherever they want."  
"No," Shadow smiled, closing his eyes, "What makes us different from _those_ animals is that we don't use our tongues to clean our own genitals." Even _that_ was a large presumption, he thought.

It was early when Sonic stirred, breaking out into a hot sweat and shivvering at the same time, breathing heavily and feeling a pounding in his head. "Lights," he called out shakily as he leant over the bed. "Shadow are you awake?" he asked desperately, "Shadow? Are you awake?"  
Shadow sat bolt upright, groggily blinking his eyes. "What? Yes, Ma! Wait, what time is it?"  
"I don't feel well," Sonic muttered miserably, his quills drooping down around his face.  
"Half past three?" Shadow cried, frowning heavily at the digital clock.  
"I feel really ill," Sonic squeaked weakly.  
"Well, you ARE really ill," Shadow grumbled, wanting to plump his pillow crossly (though he couldn't) and not feeling very compassionate at all.  
"No, I mean, REALLY ill," Sonic sniffed, climbing off his bunk, "I'm going to the medical unit. I don't feel very well." He shuffled from the room weakly, disappearing down the corridor all wrapped up in blankets.  
"Lights," Shadow muttered, leaning back in the dark agian, "Ah, Miss Magruder, where were we?"  
Sonic, however, was still slowly staggering about, panting and sweating. "I don't feel well," he muttered to himself, "I feel really hot." No sooner had he said that than his legs buckled and he dropped to the floor in the middle of the corridor in a mass of blankets.

Meanwhile, Silver was having a fine time of jumping around the corridors, running his hands over the walls as he sang and danced. "This is mine! And this is mine!" he laughed, rubbing the side of his face along all the surfaces, "All this is mine and I'm claiming all this as mine too!" He then stepped over a small patch of ground. "Except for that bit," he decided, "I don't want that bit. Hey! This has been a good day! I've eaten five times, I've slept six times and I made a lot of things mine! Tomorrow, I'm gonna see if I can breed with something." Then off he went again, sliding around in his sparkly sequined coat with the pearl buttons. "Oh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna get it," he sang, "Ooh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna get it. Ooh yeah, I think I found it," he trailed off as he caught sight of something in the next corridor, crumpled up on the floor. Hoping it was something female, Silver hurried forward but stopped when he realised that it wasn't a female at all. "Oh it's you!" he sighed then frowned, bending down to sniff the bundle of cobalt quills. "Hey, Blue Guy, you're sick!" he said to the unresponsive Sonic, "Helpless and unconscious. If you weren't my friend, I'd steal your shoes." Then he stood back up, brushing himself down. "Time for a snack." Without another look back, Silver was gone.  
Kunckles meanwihle had sounded an alert throughout Red Dwarf. " **Emergency. Emergency. There's an emergency going on. ... It's still going on. It's still an emergency. Will Shadow please hurry to White Corridor 59. This is an emergency announcement**."

Silver, on the other hand, was busy tucking into a chicken meal when Shadow came hurrying in. "Quick! Sonic's fainted and he needs help! Quick!" he cried, dashing away when Silver jumped to his feet. But after Shadow had gone, Silver sat back down again. A few seconds later, Shadow returned. "Didn't you hear me?" he asked crossly, looking from Silver down to the two Scutters that were milling around, "Did anyone hear me? Sonic's in trouble. Blue Guy, you know? Has. Fainted. I can't pick him up - come now!" Silver jumped up again, prompting Shadow to lead the way at a run. Then, as before, Silver sat down once more and started eating again. Shadow returned another few seconds later, not in the least bit impressed. "Is there something wrong with you?" he asked venomously, "Sonic's collapsed!"  
Silver gave a shrug. "Yeah?"  
"What do you mean, 'yeah', he needs help!" Shadow snarled.  
Silver raised his eyebrow. "And?"  
"And if you don't help him, he might die."  
"Oh no!" Silver sighed, "That's too bad. I really liked him too."  
"So, come and help him!" Shadow shouted, clentching his fists, getting more and more frustrated.  
"And interrupt my lunch!?" Silver cried, aghast.  
"What is more important, a fellow hedgehog's life or your smegging lunch?" Shadow asked to which Silver pointed his knife warningly at the darker hedgehog.  
"That doesn't even deserve an answer," he purred, returnig to his meal quite happily.  
Shadow glared at him for a moment before giving a mighty huff. "Right, okay, fine," he spat, and then pointed at the two Scutters, "You come with me and you get the stretcher."

Sonic stared warily at the Scutter in front of him, a thermometer clasped between its fingered claws. "Shadow, let the medi com take my temperature," he begged.  
"They've got to learn," Shadow replied, then turned his attention to the Scutter, "Now down...down...ah, stop! Now very, very, very slowly forward."  
Sonic yelped as the thermometer went straight into his left eye. "Ah! My eye!" he shrieked, batting the device away.  
"They've got to learn," Shadow protested, slightly amused by the incident, as he would be.  
"I nearly lost an eye!" Sonic growled, leaning away from the Scutter.  
A malicious smile appeared on Shadow's face. "How about a rectal thermometer?" he suggested.  
"I'm all right!" Sonic cried, slightly worried they might try that, "I'm fine now."  
"No, you're not fine," Shadow told him, "And it's your own smegging fault for going up to the officers block before it was decontaminated."  
"I just wanted to have a look around."  
"You just wanted to go into Rosy's quarters and wallow in self pity and look where it's got you!"  
"I'm all right. I've got a touch of pneumonia, that's all."  
"It's not pneumonia!" Shadow groaned in exasperation, "3 million years ago it was pneumonia, but since then it's bred and mutated so now we don't know what it is!"  
Sonic, on the other hand, was no longer listening to him, instead thinking about Amy. "Why didn't I ask her out, what's the worst she could have said?" he moaned, leaning on his hand miserably.  
Shadow was not helping the situation in the slightest. "She could have said 'no, you're a filthy, stinking, loathsome, disgusting object, I wouldn't be seen dead with in a plague pit'," he muttered unsympathetically.  
"She could have said yes!" Sonic protested, "Stranger things have happened."  
Shadow tilted his head on one side, lifting his chin thoughtfully. "Only two spring to mind, Sonic; the spontaneous combustion of the Mayor of Knothole in 1546 and that incident in 12th century Spagonia when it rained earthworms."  
Sonic still wasn't listening, it seemed. "It's this theory that I came up with," he murmured, "that everyone has two people inside them - you've got your confidence and your paranoia and your confidence is the guy that says 'hey, you're great! You're dead sexy - everybody loves you!' and your paranoia says 'you're stupid and useless! You're ugly and everybody hates you!'"  
"Odd," Shadow muttered sarcastically, looking to the scanners, "according to this reading, you're clinically dead."  
"And what had happened was," Sonic pressed on, "my confidence had just about persuaded me to ask her out and as I was walking up to her, he'd go on a business trip to Westopolis or something and I'd be left with my paranoia saying 'you must be joking, she's gonna laugh in our face!'."  
Shadow shook his head. "Sometimes," he said, "you can be really perceptive and other times, like now, you can rant and drivvel like a complete looney."  
It was then that Sonic turned to him, his face being the very picture of misery and patheticness. "Just take me to my bed," he squeaked.  
"All right," Shadow replied, straightening up. Of course, Shadow couldn't physcially do that, being a dead hologram and all, so he turned expectantly to the Scutter who was manourvering the powered chair. "Okay, you know how it works, so release the mechanism very, very gently..."  
With an almighty crash, Sonic was thrown accross the room into a heap of blue quills.

It took an hour for Shadow to direct the Scutters into successfully moving Sonic from the medical bay back into the sleeping quarters and, by that time, the blue hedgehog was exhausted, seconds away from dropping asleep. He was out cold the moment his head hit the pillow. With nothing else to do, Shadow mooched around the sleeping quarters and then practiced his arm salutes in the mirror, convincing himself that they counted as hologramatic excersises. It was while he excersising both arms, absent-mindedly hoping that Silver was choking on his precious meal somewhere, that he became aware of Sonic's fidgiting. He started to wiggle about and grasp at the blankets and his pillow, his face twisting in anguish.  
"Quick..." he muttered in his sleep, "Get an umbrella. Get an umbrella."  
Shadow paid him little mind. It wasn't often that Sonic talked in his sleep but he had grown to ignore him when he did.  
"It's raining," Sonic went on whining quietly, restlessly arching his body, "It's starting to rain."  
All of a sudden, there was a quiet _'plop'_ as something landed beside Shadow. He didn't look down to see what it was until he heard two more _'plops'_ behind him. There, wriggling about on the floor, were three fat earthworms. _'Plop' 'Plop' 'Plop'_. Three more worms fell from nowhere, bouncing off the metal ground and squiggling about, knotting themselves up. Bewildered, Shadow stepped around them, just as another worm fell on his head and passed straight through him. Shuddering, Shadow shook it free and pressed back against the wall as worm after worm started to fall from the ceiling, dropping to the floor until there were hundreds of the creatures, all wiggling around each other in a large mass. Some had even fallen onto Sonic, still sleeping and unaware of the sudden infestation of falling worms.  
"Knuckles, what's going on?" Shadow called, backing out into the corridor which was free of 'worm-rain'.  
" **Huh?"** Knuckles grunted.  
"What's happening?" Shadow asked, turning his nose up at the multitude of slippery pink invertebrates.  
" **Hercule Poirot has just stepped off the steaming train** ," Knuckles answered him, unhelpfully, " **If you want my opinion, I think they all did it**."  
Shadow glared up at the hallway ceiling. "Why do we have to have YOU as the ship's computer?" he growled, "We'd have been better off with a bucket full of sheep slop."  
" **If you've got a complaint, come straight out with it** ," Knuckles sighed.  
The black and red hedgehog waved his hands wildly at the room he was just in. "Why is it raining worms in our sleeping quarters?" he cried.  
Knuckles thought about it for a second. " **I'd be lying if I said I knew** ," he replied, " **The only comprehensible thing I've got on record is the incident in 12th century Spagonia when it rained earthworms**."  
Shadow was about to give the computer another cutting insult when an older looking chipmunk appeared out of nowhere, with a long blue coat on and a brilliantly golden chain around his neck. He took one look at Shadow and promptly went up in flames, leaving behind a charred pile of ash where he once stood. "It really is going to be one of those days," Shadow commented, stepping over the pile and distancing himself as far from the sleeping quarters as possible.

When Sonic woke up, he stretched his long legs and arms and was pleased to find that he didn't feel quite so lousy anymore. As if sensing that he had awoken, a face poked itself round the doorframe and beamed at him.  
"Hey! You're awake!" Silver chirruped, sauntering over with a bag in his paw.  
"Yeah, just woke up," Sonic nodded, propping himself up on one elbow.  
"I brought you some presents!" Silver smiled, shaking the bag as he held it up.  
Sonic was touched - Silver primarily only thought about himself. Perhaps Silver was beginning to respond to Sonic's attempts at forging a friendship. "Aw, you shouldn't have bothered," the blue hedgehog smiled back to which Silver shrugged nonchalently.  
"Ha, I'm just that kinda guy," he chuckled and then dug around in the bag with his other hand, "Let's see what we got in the magic bag here. I got you some grapes!" With that, he pulled out...what was once a bunch of grapes but was now devoid of any fruit whatsoever. "Got you a orange!" he added, after tossing the bare bunch to Sonic's face and then pulling out a curly orange peel, also dropping it on the bed.  
Sonic's smile dropped and he sighed in defeat. "Thanks a lot, I feel better already," he muttered in disappointment.  
"Well all this enormous generosity has made me tired," Silver decided, letting out a yawn, "I'm going to bed." A fresh blast of colder air hit Sonic as the silvery hedgehog took a hold of his cover and pillow and whipped them off him, settling himself down on Shadow's bed without a second thought.  
It was while he was getting himself comfortable that Shadow came in, immediately noticing his bright-eyed bunkmate. "You're awake," he noted, approaching the bed.  
"Yeah, but I'll be asleep in a minute," Silver said, winking.  
Shadow sneered at him but didn't give him an answer. "How do you feel?" he asked Sonic.  
"Fine," Silver replied, before Sonic had a chance, "just don't ask me any more questions, I'm trying to sleep!"  
"Shut up you stupid hedgehog and get out of my bed!" Shadow growled, gripping his fists.  
Silver looked affronted. "If you're gonna speak to me like THAT," he cried, "I'll take back my presents." He jumped to his feet in a foul mood, snatching up his bag and pouting like a sulky child.  
Shadow looked to Sonic once more. "How do you feel?" he asked again.  
"Hurt!" Silver wailed, running from the room.  
"I feel great," Sonic sighed, giving Shadow a small smile.  
"Listen, Sonic," Shadow began, "you had a fever, okay? And you started to hallucinate, all right? Only your hallucinations were solid."  
Sonic's ear twitched.  
"What d'you mean solid?" he frowned.  
"I mean they were real, alive, solid," Shadow told him.  
"Solid?"  
"Solid."  
"What do you mean they were solid?"  
"Okay, I'll put it another way," Shadow tried again, "You had hallucinations, right?"  
"Yeah."  
"And they were solid."  
Sonic shook his head, still not understanding.  
"I told you it wasn't ordinary pneumonia!" Shadow tutted, "I told you it was mutated! I knew something like this would happen."  
"Okay," Sonic murmured, trying to understand, "so what did I hallucinate?"  
"First of all it was worm rain," Shadow answered which prompted an amused grin to appear on his bunkmate's face.  
"Worm rain?" he echoed, then started beaming away, "Yeah, I actually dreamt that!"  
"Well it actually happened," Shadow informed him, almost accusingly, as though his bunkmate had solidified his dreams personally just to spite him.  
Sonic looked around the room, not seeing anything that indicated abnormal weather conditions. "Where's all the worms?" he asked.  
Silver then poked his head round the corner again, eyes glittering in delight. "Somebody ate them!" he replied proudly, disappearing the next second.  
"Then," Shadow went on, ignoring the other hedgehog quite successfully, "the Mayor of Knothole spontaneously combusted..." Shadow let out a sigh at this point, "...and then you hallucinated two people in the Drive Room."  
"What two people?" Sonic asked, confused.  
"Apparently," Shadow told him, complete contempt oozing from his tones, "one of them is your confidence and the other is your paranoia."

Shadow led a bewildered Sonic down to the Drive Room where, just as Shadow had said, there were two new arrivals, both of them being hedgehogs and both looking remarkably like Sonic. One was sat at the desk, looking utterly miserable as he stared balefully into his cup of tea and the other was sat tucking into a meal from one of the food dispensers.  
"See what I mean, Sonic?" Shadow huffed, slightly accusingly, glaring at the two hedgehogs as though they were nothing more than insects that had somehow got into the house and needed a good powdering. Sonic stared at them for a split second, mouth just hanging open slightly. It was easy to tell which one was which; Paranoia was a dark blue, with soul-less eyes and a white stripe going down his head and back, looking as though he'd rather be dying in a hole somewhere, while Confidence was a gleaming gold, spines slightly raised and a pair of bright pale red eyes that completely shone when he caught sight of Sonic entering the room.  
"Hey! It's the King!" Confidence crowed delightedly, jumping to his feet, "Mr Beautiful!" he came over to Sonic and took him in both hands, embracing him tightly and kissing his cheek with a grin. While Sonic stood there, stunned into gormless silence, Confidence turned to give Shadow a brief second of attention. "Hey you," he scoffed, "what does 'H' stand for? Horace?" He then burst out laughing at his own joke, guiding a still shocked Sonic across the room to sit him down at the table. "Make room, Horace, Mr Beautiful wishes to dine," Confidence informed a fuming Shadow, stood to one side with his arms tightly folded as the idiotic golden bafoon went about making a huge fuss over the blue hedgehog. "Have you lost weight?" Confidence asked with a smile, "You're looking great! Is this guy totally perfect or what?" Shadow was fully ready to give his exact opinion to the question as Sonic had his shoulders massaged by his confidence.  
"You're my confidence?" Sonic finally found the words to say, glancing up as a smile began to form on his face.  
Hearing him, Confidence gave a shivver and closed his eyes in pleasure. "Oh I just love your voice it makes me go all...ugh! It's great!"  
"I just don't understand it," Sonic went on, "you look kinda like me except for the quills and fur colour. I remember seeing something like that in a comic book...or was it a video game?"  
"I'm all the things you associate with 'confidence', King," Confidence drawled, eyes half lidded in a way that made Shadow want to hurl out into space. Sonic then looked round to the other hedgehog, the navy blue one with the stripes. He was gazing at the two of them with an expression that looked as though it couldn't care any less about its own existance.  
"And you're my paranoia?" Sonic asked, a little more cautiously.  
Paranoia just looked at him as though he had the brain cells of algae and then wrinkled his nose. "Is that a mustard stain on the front of your trousers?" he said, his voice slow and monotamous, everything Confidence wasn't.  
"What?" Sonic frowned, checking his trousers for any stains.  
"So how are you anyway?" Paranoia went on, not particularly caring for an answer, "Oh, do you have fleas or is it just dirt in your so-called spines? My word, you're getting fat, aren't you? Must be all those chili dogs and not enough open space on this vessel. You've probably got a terminal disease. Always happens to people you least expect, don't you find that? Say hello then, why dontcha? Only trying to be friendly." Having got all the cheer off his chest, Paranoia sat himself back down miserably and went about hating his own life again.  
Before Sonic could get upset, Confidence came back into the conversation with another drawling smile. "Sonny baby, what can I say?" he swung, "Is he the greatest, most handsome, most fantastic hedgehog ever! Or am I insane?"  
"You're insane," Shadow growled immediately, without missing a beat, "Sonic, what are you going do about them?"  
Sonic blinked at his bunkmate in confusion. "Do? What can I do?"  
"I think we should arrest them," Shadow said, waggling his finger at the pair of newcomers decidedly.  
Sonic frowned even more. "What for?"  
"For being hallucinations."  
"Come on, smeg head," Sonic smiled, relaxing as Confidence sat himself down across from him, "it's a bit of company, isn't it?" Confidence toasted that with his food and went back to eating.  
"Sonic, you're still sick!" Shadow cried, placing his hands on his hips and leaning forward, "These two are symptoms of your disease!" He waved his hand to Confidence who winked at Sonic mischeviously and at Paranoia who flinced away with a sneer. "They're like the spots and measles," Shadow went on ranting, "the swellings and mumps, the funny walk that comes with Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome. Until they're gone, you won't be better."  
"Hey!" Confidence interrupted, getting to his feet and advancing towards Shadow, "Now I know what the 'H' stands for. H- _idiot_ , am I right?" He then let out a peal of laughter while Shadow stared at him, wishing his hologramatic body would allow him to strangle the golden hallucination.  
"You are treading a very thin line, mi-laddo," he informed him, pointing another finger in Confidence's face, "'H' stands for hologram; I happen to be dead."  
Rather than instill some form of sympathy or guilt, his words seemed to only amuse the hallucination. "Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy," he snarled with a smirk stuck firmly to his lips. Leaving Shadow in a state of disgust, Confidence returned his attention back to Sonic, his face brightening accordingly. "Come on King, forget those losers, let's go party!" he said, scooping Sonic up by the arm and escorting him from the Drive Room.  
Shadow began to get flustered again. "No, I forbid it!" he snapped, baring his teeth.  
"Why?" Sonic asked cheekily, feeling more confident now that his confidence was manifested into physical form.  
To everyone's surprise, it was Paranoia that spoke up. "Why do you never listen to Mr Shadow?" he asked in a slimy voice, "He's so much more experienced, more level-headed, so much better than you." While Shadow looked ready to burst with ego, if his smarmy smug face was any indication, Confidence began to get puffed up in a different way.  
"Hey, no-one is better than Mr Magnificent!" the golden headgehog hallucination protested, clamping his paw over Sonic's shoulder, as the blue hedgehog grinned away, proudly, "And no-one tells the Prince of Charisma what to do, right Prince?"  
"Yeah, right!" Sonic squeaked happily, sounding like a little kid who was being publicly praised in front of his entire school, another indication to Shadow that he was still very sick.  
"That's my Sonny boy!" Confidence beamed, steering Sonic away again.  
"I don't believe it," Shadow scoffed, holding himself grandly in the company of the one who had elevating him so, "he's socialising with a figment of his imagination."  
Paranoia, looking ready to be sick himself, just agreed like a lapdog.

Knuckles, meanwhile, had detected an approaching dust storm...

Back in the bunk, Sonic was strumming on his guitar, belting out a song as best as he could on an instrument that was out of tune and in desperate need of a specialist. Confidence was on the bed beside him, gazing adoringly at the blue hedgehog.

"You wrote that!?" he gasped when Sonic finished.  
"Yeah, it was ages ago though," Sonic replied, remembering the hurtful words he had recieved from Shadow.  
"That is the greatest love song ever!" Confidence went on gushing.  
"Come on..." Sonic giggled, blushing modestly.  
"Ever!" Confidence reiterated, "It's so deep! The images..." he went on, repeating and re-singing parts of the song with such feeling and then went on to berate the music industry for making such a deal of the likes of Mozart and Beethoven. Sonic sat getting more and more proud of himself until he noticed the golden hedgehog discretely picking up a scrap of chili dog from the table.  
"What are you doing with that?" Sonic asked.  
It was Confidence's turn to blush. "You've embarassed me now," he said bashfully, "It's just...your lips have touched it, _your_ lips, the King's kissing lips! And...and I just wanted some proof that I'd met the Duke of Deliciousness!" He laid a hand back on Sonic's shoulder, staring into Sonic's eyes.  
The blue hedgehog raised an eyebrow and blinked at his Confidence with a little unsurity. "You're serious about it, aren't you?" he almost laughed, if he wasn't so creeped out.  
"Serious about what?" Confidence purred indignantly.  
"I'm a nobody!" Sonic cried, cradling his guitar, "Out of the 169 people on this ship, I rank 169, bottom of the pile!"  
"That's 'cause you didn't want all that career stuff!" Confidence countered, "You wanted that farm on South Island..." He then smirked playfully and plucked a poloroid photo off the wall, "...with you-know-who." Sonic glanced at the photo of a smiling Amy Rose, radiant and care-free, gracing the camera with her innocent green eyes and soft pink fur.  
"If she'd have come," Sonic murmured sadly, missing her all the more.  
"If? IF!?" Confidence laughed increduously, "And turn down the oppurtunity to become the happiest hedgehog in all Mobian kind!?"  
Sonic merely shrugged. "We'll never know now," he sighed, turning away wistfully.  
To that, Confidence tilted his golden head to one side. "Why not?" he asked.  
"She's dead."  
"So? So's Shadow. Bring her back."  
"I can't. Knuckles can only sustain one hologram and Shadow's hidden all the other personality disks."  
"So, find them!"  
"I can't."  
Confidence gazed at Sonic and shook his head. "King," he began softly, "you can do anything. Anything!" He grasped Sonic once more and kissed him again which was really starting to freak Sonic out a bit.

Back in the Drive Room, meanwhile, Paranoia was broadcasting his own opinions about Sonic.  
"Anything," he groaned, "He can't do anything."  
"Oh, I know," Shadow agreed merrily, "I'll bet five."  
"D'you know," Paranoia scoffed, "he used to practise kissing on his own?"  
"How?" Shadow asked, eyes widening. The navy hedgehog from Sonic's imagination held up a fist.  
"He made lips out of his hand!" he replied.  
Shadow wasn't sure if that was hilarious or downright pitiful. "That is priceless, it really is," he muttered, smiling and shaking his head, fully picturing it in his own head.  
"17 years old and he used to kiss his own hand," Paranoia sneered, his nose wrinkling further in a very unattractive way. He was fully unaware that Shadow had secretly summoned one of the Scutters to pick up a specialised needle from the science bay in order to discretely 'dispose' of the annoying hallucination. The Scutter came gliding silently in from behind as Paranoia got to his feet, cowering beside Shadow as he related more of Sonic's humiliating moments of the past. "Once," he said, his face falling, "in front of the whole school, he called his gym teacher 'Daddy'. I could have died with embarassment!" He hadn't noticed Shadow's twitching excitement as the Scutter drew closer with the enormous syringe.  
"What a silly thing to call a gym teacher," Shadow chuckled gaily, eyes flickering between the Scutter and the hedgehog hallucination.  
"I'm racked with guilt!" Paranoia wailed, "I hate him!"  
"If you hate him, why do you talk about him so much?"  
"Because," Paranoia snarled, "he makes my life one big humiliating, cringe-making, guilt-ridden HELL!"  
"NOW!" Shadow screeched as the Scutter was milimeters from Paranoia, "STAB HIM! STAB HIM! QUICK, STAB HIM!"  
Unfortunately, as Shadow rembered a split second later, Scutters were stupid and slow. As a result, Paranoia had time to look round in alarm and catch sight of Scutter and syringe in all their glory.  
"Ah, you haven't met Stabbim, have you?" Shadow hurriedly covered up, masking a polite attitude and a 'charming' smile, while the Scutter, rather smartly, dropped the needle and tried bowing his head instead, "He's one of our Scutters. Stabbin, meet Sonic's paranoia, Sonic's paranoia this is Stabbim."  
While Paranoia looked pale and ready to pass out, Sonic and his golden confidence came striding into the room looking, well, confident. "Yo Shadow, listen, we've been thinking," Sonic began, a kick in his step that told Shadow that his overbearing confident hallucination was influencing him badly, "We think we can get Rosy Rascal back without turning you off."  
"Oh," Paranoia spluttered, waving his hands about, "He's drunk! Yes."  
"All we've got to do," Sonic went on, a great beam on his facfe, "is turn off all unnessessary power systems and Knuckles says it will work!"  
"Ding dong!" Confidence sang, holding a light bulb over Sonic's head, "Another great idea from the Blue Blur himself!" This was accompanied by a sparkling grin towards an imaginary camera while Sonic held up his thumbs, dancing from foot to foot.  
"You've been so obsessed with a girl you hardly know," Paranoia huffed sickly, flattening his ears.  
"Hardly knows her!?" Confidence gasped, affronted, "You haven't heard his love song!" To back this up, he tried singing it but was stopped by Sonic.  
"Sonic, you're not having her disk," Shadow flatly replied, his arms returning to their folded position.  
"Why?" Sonic challenged with a glare, "Because she'll rank above you?"  
"But she's a bright, good-looking, intelligent, witty, upwardly mobile officer," Paranoia snuffed, "Why should she be interested in you?"  
"Yes," Shadow agreed, "Why should she be interested in you?"  
Sonic then faced his confidence. "Yeah," he also agreed, "Why should she be interested in me?"  
Confidence was looking off into the middle distance, a dreamy far-away look on his face. "Hmm?" he murmured, looking to Sonic, "Sorry, I was just thinking about your song I just...can't get it out of my head." He gave another smile before looking cross. " _Why_?" he cried, answering the challenge, "Because you're great! You're an incredibly seductive, charming, charasmatic young stud!"  
"Oh yeah," Sonic beamed, "I forgot. THAT'S why she would be interested in me," he retorted to Shadow and his paranoia.  
"Sonic, you're not having her disk or ANY disk," Shadow repeated, turning his nose to the air. HE was the only hologram on board Red Dwarf and THAT was how it was going to stay.  
"Come on, King," Confidence smiled in Sonic's ear, "You know Shadow - where would he hide them?"  
"I don't know," Sonic whined.  
"Yes you do."  
"No he doesn't," Paranoia called from his seat.  
"Come on," Confidence went on, ignoring the other hallucination, "Think 'winner'!"  
Sonic's quills bristled as he thought and then, with a gleam in his emerald eyes, he lifted his face. "Outside," he said, "outside the ship."  
In the background, Shadow looked up sharply, eyes blazing.  
"Er...wrong actually!" he snapped, hurriedly moving away to stand defiantly by the door.  
"Where outside?" Confidence asked, ignoring Shadow's tight body language. "Well, he'd have to send the Scutters..." Sonic reasoned, knowing Shadow couldn't pick anything up, "...and the disks would have to be safe..."  
Shadow plastered a goofy smile on his face and shook his head. "Wrong, wrong, absolutely brimming over with wrong-ability," he sang. Again, he was ignored.  
"And...!" Sonic suddenly started to smile, "...they'd have to be right under my nose so he could laught at me!"  
"Wrong and getting wronger all the time," Shadow snorted, still smiling although it was with discomfort, not satisfaction.  
"Outside our sleeping quarters," Sonic then announced, grinning at his confidence, "The solar panel outside our sleeping quarters!" He turned to face Shadow excitedly, never looking so elated in all his years.  
Shadow bared his teeth and looked decidedly 'put-out'. "You followed me, you goit!" he hissed.  
Sonic began to bubble over with joy. "Is that where they are!?" he shouted in ecstasy as Confidence looked on like a proud father. When Shadow didn't answer, Sonic leapt into the air and made a bolt for the door. "That's incredible! I did it!" he sang down the hallway as Confidence followed, shooting a gloating grin over his shoulder as he went.

A little while later, Sonic was waiting for the dust storm to abate, kitted up in a shiny spacesuit and a helmet, unaware that Shadow had since made an unnerving discovery in the Medical Bay. He had tried asking Knuckles if it would be long before the storm passed but the computer had thought he was asking about how close he was to finishing the Hercule Poirot story.  
"Hey! How's my Sonny Boy?" Confidence called out cheerfully, marching into the room in a suit that was every bit as shiny as he was gold. "Oh look!" he laughed, "You've got a body like a coat hanger. How can you make a spacesuit look like evening wear?"  
But before Sonic, smiling at the compliment, could think of an answer, Shadow came storming into the Drive Room, waving a furious finger as he clamped his gaze on the golden hallucination. "Let me ask you one question..." he growled, stomping across the floor as fiercely as his hologram body would allow.  
"It's no use arguing, Shadow, I'm going," Sonic interrupted.  
However, Shadow's question was nothing to do with that. Never taking his fierce glare from Confidence's smiling face, he asked, "Who smashed up the Medi Com?"  
"He's stalling, King, let's go," Confidence quipped, pulling Sonic away as the blue hedgehog frowned, puzzled.  
"Knuckles, give them a punch up," Shadow ordered and, sure enough, on the screen appeared video footage of the Medic Com, sparking and fizzing amidst plumes of smoke.  
Frustrated and wanting to get his hands on Amy Rose's Disk, Sonic let out a sigh. "Look, what's in it for them if they smashed up the Medical Unit?" he asked as Confidence squeezed his shoulder.  
Shadow was at his breaking point. "Sonic, come 'ere," he called softly, beckoning him. So Sonic shuffled over, his cute-boy face doing nothing to soften Shadow up. "You are still sick," Shadow informed him, now starting to sound like a fussing mother.  
"I. Feel. Great," Sonic insolently bit back.  
"You will not..." Shadown began to scold but was put off by Sonic's confidence sticking his grinning golden face in between them, "You will not be better until _they've_ gone." He turned his back on Confidence, leaning as close to Sonic as he dared. "They know that and now they've stopped you from getting any treatment."  
Sonic, for one brief moment, looked taken aback and he sent his confidence a questioning look. Shadow should have known better than to think Sonic was going to listen to him, however, for with one dismissive shake of the head, Confidence had the blue hedgehog back under his thumb.  
Shadow was slowly losing this fight and he felt bitter about it. "Where's Paranoia?" he asked seethingly narrowing his pinky red eyes at the gold hallucination. "I don't know, is it someplace near Uruguay?" Confidence chortled, making Sonic giggle, "Who is this joker?" Shadow, on the other hand, remained stoick, for he could see the paleness of Sonic's face which indicated that he wasn't well.  
"Sonic, they're germs and they're dangerous," he warned, turning away in defeat.  
"Storm's passed, Sonic," Knuckles then announced, "Air locks are now released."  
Confidence faced Sonic. "What are we waiting for, King?" he asked.  
Sonic was gazing at the back of Shadow's head, the slightest form of hesitation on his soft features. Something about what he was saying was adding up but...but he really did want to see Amy Rose again. "Nothing," he said firmly, walking from the room with Confidence close behind.  
"Knuckles," Shadow spoke, "put a trace on Paranoia."  
"What's a trace?" Knuckles asked.  
"It's space jargen," Shadow sighed, "It means find him."  
Knuckles let out a scoff. "No it doesn't, you just made it up to be cool."  
"Where is he?" Shadow really had no time for this.  
Knuckles' computer face tilted slightly then, a second later, "Paranoia is no longer aboard this ship."

"Hey, look at that view King-o!" said Confidence as he and Sonic shuffled along on the outside walkway of Red Dwarf, heading towards the solar panels, "Me and you on top of the world! Makes you wanna dance!" Which was what they did, along the walkway, cha-cha-cha-ing in step.  
"Hey, here it is!" Sonic announced, stooping down to rummage behind while Confidence went on dancing. Sure enough, there was a space-tight box strapped securely behind. Sonic felt like singing as well as dancing. A slight squeak of the walkway, however, made Sonic's ears prick. "Did you hear something?" he asked, nervously.  
"Nope," Confidence replied, "In space, no-one can hear your cha-cha-cha."  
Sonic hurriedly stuffed the box into his largest spacesuit pocket and stood back up. "You don't think my paranoia could have got here first, do you?" he asked worriedly. After all, he hadn't felt his paranoia set in since it had materialised in physical form - why would it be back?  
"Forget him, he's no danger," Confidence said breezily, shuffling from side to side.  
"He smashed the Medical Unit," Sonic pointed out.  
"No he didn't."  
"What d'you mean?"  
"I did."  
" _You_ did!?" Sonic felt his quills go ridgid. So Shadow had been right to worry!  
"So we can be together, Sonny!" Sonic's confidence smiled, "You don't wanna get cured, I did it for you!"  
"So where did he go then?" Sonic asked with a gulp, talking about his paranoia.  
"I killed him, cha-cha-cha," Confidence answered bluntly.  
"What do you mean you killed him, cha-cha-cha!?"  
"Hey," Confidence pouted, stopping his cha-cha-cha dance, "don't look at me like that! He didn't suffer. I just fed him into the waste grinder and flushed his mince into space."  
Severely frightened and feeling all the effects of his _deceased_ paranoia now, Sonic began to move slowly back. "Look, I'm g-gonna go inside now," he said lightly, "It gets a little bit hot - I get claustrophobic in these suits."  
"Take your helmet off," Confidence merely suggested.  
Now Sonic knew that the guy had flipped. "What!?"  
"Your hat. Take your helmet off."  
"I'll die."  
"Why?"  
"There's no oxygen out here."  
"Hey, oxygen's for losers. Come on..."  
Sonic was now hurriedly backpedalling from his confidence as he tried grabbing at his helmet. "I NEED oxygen!" he squeaked, clambering over the bars to get round the twisted hallucination.  
"You don't need anything, King, you're the king!" Confidence whined, following him.  
"You're crazy!" Sonic insisted, trying to creep as quickly as he could back to the airlock.  
"Who told you you needed oxygen, huh?" Confidence comlained, "Some loser who was trying to make you feel small. Look, I'll prove it to you!" the golden hedgehog now stopped, a short distance away, "I'll take mine off first. We'll soon see who the crazy one is around here."  
"NO!" Sonic screeched as Confidence took his helmet clean off, exposing himself to the vaccume of space...

Silver whistled a merry tune as he took another shirt from the pile, sat surrounded by his clothes as they hung up around him.  
"Must you do this now?" Shadow sighed, glowering down at the more primitive hedgehog. Silver glowered back.  
"I'm doin' my laundry!"  
"It's totally disgusting," Shadow sneered, to which Silver looked taken aback.  
"What's disgusting?" he growled, but rather than wait for an answer, he lifted the shirt collar and ran his tongue all along the edge.  
Sonic ignored the pair of them, picking up Amy Rose's disk and heading out of the sleeping quarters.  
"Sonic," Shadow called, stopping him, "I just wanna say - I was right all along. I said they were germs and they _were_ germs."  
Sonic shrugged. "Yeah, okay, so what?"  
"And I'm just saying now..." Shadow continued, "...that disk will only bring you misery. I just want you to remember that I said that."  
"Look," Sonic reasoned, "If she comes back and she's not interested, I can handle it."  
"Whatever, Sonic, I want it on record: that disk is a one way ticket to misery-ville."  
Sonic twirled the disk between his fingers. "Yeah well I've spent enough time listening to my paranoia," he smiled, "Now I'm going to listen to my confidence."  
After he had gone, Shadow gave the air one of his salutes and marched smugly after him while Silver, not having a salute to perform, merely mimicked him and then strutted more proudly behind.

As Sonic tried out various ways of greeting Amy, Shadow came in and took up a position at his side, Silver coming up and standing on his other side.  
"Sonic," Shadow said seriously, "Look, good luck. I mean it."  
"Smeg off."  
"No honestly, I mean it, good luck!"  
Not entirely trusting his genuity, Sonic let out a sigh and plugged in the disk. "All right, Knux, switch it on." There was a buzzing sound and there, materialising in front of them, stood...another Shadow, with the exact same smirk that the first one had.  
"Well, he did warn you," the new Shadow shrugged.  
"I certainly did," Shadow agreed, unable to keep the smug delight from showing itself, "D'you honestly think I'd put Rosy's disk in Rosy's box where ANY munchkin could find it? You think you had it bad before, Sonic, now you've got in sterio, baby!" This was capped off with a double salute from both black hologram hedgehogs. "Welcome aboard Shadow," the first greeted.  
"Nice to be here Mr Shadow, you son of a gun," the second smiled.

 _ **Next time…**_

 **Sonic, Shadow and Silver are told that they can teleport back to Mobius. However, they end up in a parallel universe where they meet their female counterparts.**


	4. Episode 4 - Parallel Universe

_**Writer's Note -**_ **I apologise in advance. Not nessessarily to the Reader but to Sonic. If this wasn't a plot-driven episode, I wouldn't have included it. I'm so sorry...**

 **-Duma**

EPISODE 4 - "Parallel Universe"

The Dream Recorder could save some pretty unusual dreams sometimes, Silver mused, such as the dream he had where he had been singing on broadway with Sonic and Shadow as his backing singers. He watched as he and the other two danced around the stage and shook his head. When asked what it was he was searching for exactly, he replied, "I'm looking for this dream I had last month on the dream recorder. It was sensational."  
"What was it about?" Sonic asked, shuffling a pile of cards.  
Silver stood up and grinned. "Me, three girls and a family size tub of banana yogurt."  
Now that the dramatic fiasco with Shadow's double had subsided (after the very amusing discovery that Shadow just could _not_ get along well with himself and refused to live with himself a moment longer), life had sort-of gone back to 'normal'.  
The dark hedgehog himself, keeping his hologramatic body fit on an excersising bike, glanced at Silver with narrowed eyes. "You have a very strange attitude to women if you ask me," he muttered.  
"Say what, goal-post head?" Silver hissed.  
"It's all mating!" Shadow scoffed, "There's no sense of settling down, having a long-term relationship."  
One of the things Mobian animals tried doing, along with wear clothes, was to leave behind their original instincts to breed with several different mates, choosing to adopt the idea of settling down with one person. Silver, still being relatively wild, had trouble with this.  
"Hey, I wanna settle down," he protested, "and as soon as I find the right small group of girls, the seven or eight women who are right for me, my wandering days are over, buddy." Having said this, he swept from the room, tightened quills raised in pride.  
"You see?" Shadow sneered, "Living in the wild. Totally maladjusted."  
Sonic glanced at him briefly. "That's rich coming from a man whose favourite book is 'How to pick up girls by hypnosis'," he commented.  
"There's nothing wrong with that, Sonic, it's a good book," Shadow informed him, getting off the computer simulated bike, "Full of handy hints, as well - and they work."  
"Get out of town," Sonic laughed.  
"That's how I met Loraine," Shadow sighed with a smile, "By hypnotising."  
"You hypnotised a girl into going out with you?"  
"Yes, I gave her the old 'There's something in your eye' technique. Fixed her with a mesmer stare..." Shadow gave Sonic a very creepy stare indeed, "...and bingo! She agreed to come on a date."  
Sonic, unnerved by the face Shadow had just pulled, shivvered and went back to sorting his cards. "...What was wrong with her?" he asked.  
"Nothing."  
"Come on, a girl agrees to go out with you and there was _nothing_ wrong with her?"  
As had been previously mentioned, there was nothing wrong with any of the hedgehogs' looks. In fact, as a species went, hedgehogs were decidedly attractive. Only Shadow's blossoming personality and the smarmy expressions he constantly wore were the factors in warding off unsure female suitors.  
"Sonic," Shadow snapped, "she was an extremely attractive and bright young lady."  
Sonic rolled his eyes. "Oh, well it MUST work then."  
"...Of course she had an artifical nose."  
"What?"  
"Oh, tastefully done. Quality metal - no rivets."  
Sonic shook his head. "What happened?" he asked, already suspecting the outcome.  
"Well," Shadow sighed, pacing the room, "things were a little bit stilted in the taxi - all my jokes about her nose hadn't gone down too well. And they were good gags, I mean quality gags like, 'Where are we going? Who NOSE?'" Sonic pressed his forehead into the table. "No cheap shots. Anyway, when we got to the restraunt, she must have had an attack of nerves or something - she said she was going to the loo and ended up climbing out of the toilet window."  
"...I wonder why," Sonic muttered into the table.  
"It's NOT because she didn't want to see me, Sonic," Shadow hurriedly told him, "She phoned the next day and said how much she'd love to come on another date with me, only suddenly she had to move to Pluto..."  
Sonic lifted his head up and looked at his bunkmate dispairingly. "You're a sad weasle of a hedgehog, you know that, Shadow?"  
"No," Shadow pouted, "I'm just ill at ease with the opposite sex."  
"That's 'cause you see them as some alien species that need to be conquered by trickery," Sonic said, exasperated, "They're not! They're people. You don't need those books on hypnosis and - what's that other one? 1000 fabulous chat up lines?"  
"Sonic, I DO need that, it's brilliant! Those chat up lines are guaranteed!"  
"There's no such thing."  
Shadow glared at the back of Sonic's head and then marched over to the other side of the room. "All right," he announced, "You be a woman, okay? Sort of, on your own, in a bar, short leather mini skirt, peep-hole bra..." He paused as Sonic turned to look at him, unimpressed.  
"Okay, go on," the blue hedgehog then sighed, turning back and picking up the rest of his beer with an elegant hand, jutting out his chest and crossing his legs in a feminine way.

(What no-one else in the universe knew was that if there was one talent Sonic was _mind-blowingly_ good at - it was pretending to be female. ( _ **See 'Adeventures of Sonic the Hedgehog'**_ ) **.** )  
"This is the most incredible chat-up line you will hear in your entire life," Shadow assured him but Sonic was getting impatient.  
"Go on," he repeated, still not liking the idea of Shadow trying to chat him up.  
"All right. In a bar, on your own..." the darker hedgehog repeated, just to compose himself. Out of the corner of his eye, Sonic could then see Shadow waltz up to him smoothly. "Excuse me," Shadow purred flirtatiously, pretending to lean on a bar, "would you like to join me for a cocktail?"  
"No."  
Shadow blinked. "No, you can't say no!" he whined, "It doesn't work if you say no, you've got to say yes."  
With another eye roll, Sonic apologised. "Go on," he prompted.  
"So," Shadow continued and put on his flirty voice again which almost made Sonic shudder, "Would you like a Wormdo?"  
"What's that then?"  
Shadow faltered once more. "What's what?" he tried asking with a hint in his voice.  
"A Wormdo?" Sonic murmured.  
"What about it?" Shadow tried prompting again.  
Now Sonic was really confused. "...Is this still the opening line?" he asked, turning round.  
"You're not giving me the right replies!" Shadow cried, breaking character.  
"What IS the right reply!?"  
"I come up to you and say, 'excuse me, would you like to join me for a cocktail?', you say _YES_ , I say, 'would you like a wormdo' and you say, 'what's a wormdo?' and I say..."  
"Oh it wriggles along the ground like that?" Sonic interrupted, wiggling his finger in front of him.  
Shadow gave a grunt. "You know it!" he complained, folding his arms crossly.  
"Shadow," Sonic almost chuckled, "you could not pull a rotton tooth out of a dead horse's head with that one."  
" **I've done it**!" Knuckles suddenly interrupted, his face appearing on the screen.  
"Done what?" Sonic asked.  
" **The Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich** ," Knuckles smiled, " **Samuel Morse invented the Morse Code, Plato invented the plate...and now I, Knuckles, have invented the Knuckle-hop Drive**."  
"Ooh," Shadow chirped, completely sarcastically, "I can't wait to see it."  
" **It's monumental, this** ," Knuckles told them, " **The Knuckle-hop Drive can transfer matter instantly to any other point in space**."  
"What, you mean...we could go back to Mobius?" Sonic asked, hope appearing in his eyes.  
" **In a matter of seconds** ," Knuckles grinned proudly.  
"You mean we could go back to Mobius, like, right now? This instant!?"  
" **Right on** ," Knuckles nodded.  
"Rock and roll!" Sonic cheered, jumping to his feet and clapping his hands.

A small grey box was sat on the table, brandishing two buttons - one red, one green. Sonic, Silver and Shadow stood around it, amazed.  
"Is this it!?" Sonic cried.  
" **What d'you think**?" Knuckles smugly smiled, eyes half closed. It looked as though it were made of cardboard with 'Knuckle-hop Drive' scrawled accross it in red-tip.  
"It's just a box with 'Stop' and 'Start' on it!" Sonic protested, lightly picking it up and turning it over in his paws.  
" **It's fairly straightforward** ," Knuckles agreed, not picking up on Sonic's contempt, " **If you want to start it, press Start. You can work out the rest of the controls for yourself**."  
"It's absolutely pathetic," Shadow murmured, shaking his head.  
" **Right** ," Knuckles pressed, ignoring the jib, " **Let's Knuckle-hop! Engage Drive...Drive engaged. Initiating ignition sequence...ignition sequence initiated**."  
"Get on with it," Shadow complained.  
" **Takes time, this**!" Knuckles scolded, " **One slight error in any one of my 13 billion calculations, we'll all be blasted to smithereens**!" Wasn't the most comforting thing a slightly estrained super computer had ever told them... " **Here we go then** ," Knuckles then added, clearing his non-existant throat, " **10...9...8...6...5..**."  
"You missed out the 7," Shadow called out angrily.  
" **Did I**?" Knuckles said, surprised, " **I've always 'ad a bit of a blind spot with 7's**."  
"...We're going to die..." Shadow sang with a smile.  
Knuckles then said he'd start 'lower down'. **"...1 - Blast off!"**  
With that Sonic hit the green button.

" **We've done it** ," Knuckles announced, " **We're home**."  
Nothing felt different and it hadn't even felt as though they'd moved.  
"It worked?" Shadow asked, increduously.  
"We're at Mobius? You must be joking," Sonic chuckled.  
" **Half a mo** ," Knuckles told them and his face disappeared from the screen. He was back a moment later, confused. " **It's gone** ," he gasped.  
"What has?" Silver asked, probably the most confused out of everyone on the ship.  
" **Mobius** ," Knuckles went on, getting panicked, " **It's missing! It's not there...Wait a minute. Sorry, I was looking out the wrong window**." His face vanished again. " **No!"** he confimed, frowning as he reappeared, " **No, it HAS gone! The entire solar system is missing**!" Sonic had his hands pressed to his face.  
"Well, what is _actually_ out there?" Shadow asked suspiciously.  
" **Nothing,"** Knuckles replied, " **Just space**."  
Shadow let out a slow breath and stood up. "Knuckles..." he said calmly, "The thought occurs...that we haven't _actually_ reached Mobius. The further thought occurs...that we haven't _actually_ budged a smegging inch."  
But Knuckles was adamant. " **No, no we HAVE. It's just..."** Knuckles looked a little sheepish, " **I don't know where we are. I've got to admit it: I've flamingoed up**." His reasoning for that was that people often used cockerels to emphasis their mistakes (Shadow didn't bother correcting him on THAT) and that since a flamingo was much bigger, to 'flamingo up' meant that the mistake was also much bigger. " **Wait...!"** the computer suddenly broke off, " **There IS something out there. It's another ship**."  
"Aliens!" Shadow shouted, excited. Shadow had a bit of weird fascination with aliens which was incredibly ironic seeing as if they DID meet anything extraterestrial, Shadow would be the first one hiding under the bed.  
"Punch it up," Sonic ordered.  
" **Looks like an exact copy of Red Dwarf** ," Knuckles noted and, sure enough, on the screen appeared ANOTHER Red Dwarf, the mining vessel that the three hedgehogs had been calling home for the past 3 million years and more.  
"Eh?" Sonic mumured, bewildered, "So what's happened?"  
 **"Well somehow - don't ask me how..."** Knuckles started to explain, " **We've jumped into a parallel universe. We've entered the 5th dimension."** The 5th dimension, according to Knuckles, was co-existing reality; two bodies that share the same space but are unaware of each other's existence.  
"Sounds like my parents in bed," Shadow drawled.  
"So hang on," said Sonic, "This is another Red Dwarf with another Shadow and Sonic on board?"  
"Will they be exactly the same as us?" Shadow asked, anxiously remembering the drama with the _other_ Shadow hologram with whom he had 'divorced' quite painfully.  
" **No, they'll be differences** ," Knuckles replied, " **It's a parallel universe, isn't it**?"  
"What do you mean?"  
" **Well for instance, in this universe, it could be that the Nocturnus Clan won the Echidnian Civil War. Could be something even more incredible like, in this universe, Big the Cat went on to be the lead star in a really successful video game series. Oh, hang on**!" Knuckles suddenly broke off, " **I'm linking up with their on board computer**." Another face appeared beside Knuckles - another Echidna...but female.  
" **Hello** ," she greeted, " **I'm Nockles**."  
" **Hello, I'm Knuckles** ," Knuckles smiled.  
 **"Hello Knuckles."**  
 **"Hello Nockles."**  
 **"Wow, this is a turn-up isn't it? You better boogie on over so we can sort it out."**  
 **"Right on, Sis."**  
 **"See you, Knux."**  
 **"See you, Nock**." Then she was gone.  
For a moment, no-one spoke.  
" **I'm in there**!" Knuckles grinned.

Using one of the transport vehicles, Sonic, Shadow and Silver were soon flying over to the second Red Dwarf and they took, with them, one of their blue-grey Scutters. The ship felt exactly the same as theirs and even looked the same.  
"It's identicle in every detail to our Red Dwarf," Shadow noted, looking around as their Scutter hummed off to explore.  
"There's a very funny smell around here that I don't like one bit," Silver growled, his spines raised, "I'm gonna get rid of it." He promptly pulled out a bottle and started spraying it around him as he wandered off down the corridors. Shadow and Sonic weren't worried about him; Sonic knew that Silver knew his way around Red Dwarf and Shadow often hoped that their 'pet' hedgehog would never be seen again.  
"So where's the other Sonic and Shadow?" Sonic wondered, turning to open a door. It opened smoothly and Sonic leapt back.

He had found them.

Standing in the doorway was another blue hedgehog and another black and red hologram hedgehog. One had green eyes, the other a pale red. The only thing was - they were females. Very attractive females.  
"So, you're _not_ aliens," Female Shadow noted, holding herself in a way that Male Shadow would.  
Female Sonic, on the other hand, hadn't taken her eyes of her male counterpart and was decidedly, 'checking him out'. "Hi," she purred.  
"Hi," Sonic murmured back, also looking her up and down. He knew his blue colouring was handsome on a bloke but he hadn't realised how pretty it was on a woman while Shadow was taken aback by how smart his striking red and black was. He saluted his female counterpart and she did the same while the two Sonics stood, milimeters apart, smiling at one another.  
"How do you do?" Female Shadow asked.  
"How do _you_ do?" Shadow asked back smoothly. It was clear that everyone was trying to make a good impression on themselves.  
"So you must be Sonic?" Sonic asked.  
"And you are too," Female Sonic nodded.  
" _You_ must be Shadow," Female Shadow began. She even SPOKE like the male Shadow, "So am I."  
"Splendid."

"So you come from a universe that's exactly the same as ours?" Sonic was saying to his female counterpart as they mooched on over to the sleeping quarters for a drink, "Only, everything is opposite?"  
"Well I don't know if EVERYTHING is opposite," Female Sonic replied, "It seems like that."  
"You come from a female-oriented society?"  
"It's not exactly female-oriented anymore," Female Sonic answered, getting him a drink, "not since the 60's, you know, with the Equal Rights for Men marches. You know, when they burnt their jockstraps and all that?"  
Sonic smiled. "So your history is parallel to ours as well? So hang on, erm...who was the first person on the moon?"  
"Nellie Armstrong."  
"So who wrote Hamlet?"  
"Will Shakespeare," Female Shadow replied, walking into the room with Shadow close behind.  
"Ah, so he was a bloke?" Sonic asked.  
"No, she was a woman!" Female Sonic told him, "Wilma Shakespeare."  
"Yes, she wrote all the greats," Female Shadow nodded, "Rachael the Third. Taming of the Shrimp..."  
"What's this?" Shadow shuddered, looking down at the table where several magazines were lying open.  
"My camera monthly magazine," Female Shadow told him proudly.  
"But it's disgusting," Shadow complained, wrinkling his nose, "It's full of semi-naked blokes draping themselves over sports cars!" Of course, he had a camera monthly magazine too - full of semi-naked _babes_ draping themselves over sports cars.  
"What's wrong with that?" Female Shadow smiled seductively, moving towards him, "You're not one of those boring masculinists, are you?"  
"So sexual attitudes are opposite as well?" Sonic muttered, leaning back against the bunk.  
"What's that my little cupcake?" Female Shadow giggled, batting her eyelashes at the blue male.  
"You're little _what_!?" Sonic squeaked, backing away hurriedly.  
"But it just looks ridiculous," Shadow went on, staring at the magazines with a pained expression, "I mean, these models are deformed, hugely deformed...makes one feel quite...inadequet." He then held himself very 'protectively' as his female counterpart stalked towards him again.  
"I wouldn't worry about that my pretty," she crooned, sliding her finger down his back so that his spines tightened.  
"Hey, holograms can touch each other!" Female Sonic pointed out with a smile.  
Shadow looked less than thrilled. Curse his good-looks, he thought to himself.

Poor Silver wasn't having as good a time as he would have hoped. His counterpart wasn't female at all - it was a fox. A very friendly fox, that much was true, but a fox all the same - a wild hedgehog's enemy. Sonic may have been comfortable befriending foxes, Silver had thought miserably, but not him! They decided to throw a bit of a party later on and Silver was adamant that he wasn't going to socialise with the shaggy fox at all, no matter how much the brown furred creature tried to get him to dance. The two Sonics, on the other hand were perfectly happy dancing together on the dance floor and drinking larger while the two Shadows looked on. That is, Male Shadow was watching them but his female counterpart often stole lustful gazes in his direction from time to time.  
"Well, they seem to be getting on, don't they?" Shadow remarked, hoping to break the tension, somewhat.  
"Yes," Female Shadow agreed, swishing her long dark quills, "Absolutely. Like a house on fire." Thus started one of the most awkward conversations in hedgehog history.  
"Oh yes. You can say that again."  
"Mind you, we've got a pretty good conversation going on here."  
"Oh yes, yes."  
"Absolutely."  
"Funny really, I'm not normally good at talking to the opposite sex."  
"No, I'm not. I...run out of things to say."  
"Me too." There was an incredibly long pause until Shadow broke it. "So you're a girl then?"  
Female Shadow, looking very beautiful but...smarmy, lowered her lashed eyelids and smiled warmly. "Yes," she replied softly.  
"That's nice," Shadow nodded, swallowing.  
"Hang on," Female Shadow suddenly mewed, leaning towards him, "Haven't you got something in your eye?" She then stared at him, unnerving Shadow to his holographic bones. He almost couldn't look away from her mesmer stare and he hurriedly shook his head.  
"You're trying to hypnotise me, aren't you?" he growled.  
"No, of course not," said Female Shadow.  
"Well stop staring then!"  
"I'm not staring."  
"Yes you are."  
"Okay, I read it in this book," Female Shadow admitted, "It's great for picking up bits of totty."  
Shadow narrowed his eyes at her. "Well I'd hardly describe myself as a 'bit of totty'," he huffed, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.  
"Oh yes," Female Shadow grinned, standing over him, "Totty, totty, totty."  
"I think you've had rather too much to drink," Shadow gulped, leaning away from her advancing, curvacious figure, " _I_ always get like this when I'm tanked up."  
"Come on, you're interested," his female counterpart whispered sweetly, moving her face close to Shadow's pricked ears.  
"I assure you I'm not!" Shadow quickly informed her, leaning away even more.  
"Why are you giving me all the signs then?" Female Shadow asked slowly.  
"What signs?"  
"Wearing such tight trousers?"  
"They're not tight!"  
"Yes they are!" She slapped his thigh. "You're begging for it."  
"I'm not totty and I'm not begging for anything!" Shadow squeaked.  
"Come on, give us a snog, I promise I won't try to take off your underpants!" She was now practically lying on him.  
"Look I'm sorry I'm just not that kind of...boy."  
Female Shadow then stood herself back up and shrugged, catching Female Sonic's eye. "Frigid," she mouthed, pointing to Shadow.  
Shadow, on the other hand, looked at her in absolute disbelief. "You're disgusting! You're only after me for one thing!" he complained.  
Female Shadow gave him an icy smile. "Why?" she slurred, "How many have you got?"

As Sonic and his female counterpart parted ways to get drinks, Shadow hurriedly beckoned him over from where his own female counterpart was trying to lick his ears. "Sonic!" he called cheerfully, "My old mate! Come and join us! Please, Chaos, come and join us!"  
Female Shadow straightened up, licking her lips as she laid eyes on Sonic. "I won't be long," she promised, stroking Shadow's fur. "Oh and if you want to keep your beer cool," she told Sonic, "stick it between his legs." She then flounced off to find Female Sonic.  
Male Sonic just stared after her, shivvering. "What was all that about?" he asked.  
"That is the most awful woman I have ever met," Shadow panted, trying to calm down from all the 'attention' that had been smothered on him in an attempt to get his quills to stand up.  
"She's you," Sonic pointed out.  
"She's absolutely repugnant!" Shadow huffed, "She doesn't treat me like I'm a normal person at all, she seems to regard me as some sort of discardable sex object."  
"She's the female equivilent of _you_."  
"Nonsense, she's maladjusted," he snorted, "Trust my luck to end up with El Weirdo while you tramp off with the one with the legs."  
Sonic shook his head. "She thinks of men the exact same way you think of women," he scoffed.  
"She accused me of wagging my tail in a provocative way!" Shadow went on complaining, "I was just walking! Can I help it if I happen to be sexy?" He let out a sigh. "What's the other one like?"  
"Totally gross," Sonic winced, "She's unbelievable. She tried to impress me by drinking a 6 pack of larger and belching the whole of Yankee Doodle Dandee."  
"That's _your_ party piece, isn't it?" Shadow pointed out.  
"Yeah, but when I do it, it's really stylish, man," Sonic shrugged.  
Shadow looked down at the table. "So you think you'll...um..." he cocked his head sharply to one side.  
"Get out of town!" Sonic protested, blushing, "I mean she's a good laugh and all that, but all she wants to do is get completely blitzed out of her brains and eat chili dogs. I mean, call me crazy, but I just don't find that attractive."

The two girls, elsewhere in the room, were also discussing their male counterparts.  
"How are you getting on then?" asked Female Sonic as Female Shadow sat herself down.  
"Well, put it this way," she replied, "They'll be two pairs of shoes under the bed tonight. _Wallop_! Eh?"  
"He doesn't look too interested to me," Female Sonic commented, "He looks more sort of...petrified."  
"He just doesn't want me to think he's the Ship's Bike. But I'm getting the signs. He crossed his legs and made pretty darn sure I saw he was wearing sock suspenders."  
"Shadow," Female Sonic smiled, "he's not interested."  
"Maybe not now," Female Shadow chuckled, "but wait til I hit him with the Wormdo line."

Shadow certainly wasn't willing to wait for the Wormdo line.  
"Knuckles," he hissed into Sonic's watch, "how long until the Hop Drive is working?"  
" **We're busy fixing it right now** ," Knuckles replied, Nockles at his side. Knuckles had a big lipstick mark on his face and Nockles looked embarassed.  
"What's that mark on your face, Knux?" Sonic asked flatly.  
" **What face**?" Knuckles gulped, looking around him innocently.  
"The lipstick mark," Sonic replied.  
" **That's not a lipstick mark** ," Nockles coughed, " **That's a computer rash**."  
"Knuckles, just get the Hop Drive fixed and get me out of here!" Shadow pleaded.  
"What's the matter?" Female Sonic asked, sitting down next to Male Sonic for a new drinking game, "Aren't you having a good time?"  
"A good time?" Shadow laughed insanely and then turned to his own bunkmate. "Sonic," he murmured in his ear, "I'm going to bed now, by myself, on my own, _alone_. If she comes back, tell her I've got a headache or something."  
"Why, where's she gone?" Sonic asked.  
"She's gone to get some sexy videos," Shadow winced, "She seems to think seeing two men together might turn me on."  
"Where are YOU sleeping?"  
"I'm not telling you, it's too risky."  
"Come on, what are you, a man or a munchkin?"  
Shadow raised his eyebrows. " _I'm off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz_..." he sang as he skipped away. Sonic shrugged and went back to the drinking game with his female counterpart, not forseeing anything bad happening at all.

When Sonic woke the following 'morning', his head was pounding and he felt uncomfortable. "Uh...did I get drunk or did I get drunk..." he murmured to himself, rubbing his head. It took him a couple of seconds to realise he was in Shadow's bunk. It took a further second to realise he wasn't alone in Shadow's bunk. "Uh oh..." he grunted, laying eyes on his female counterpart splayed out beside him. They were both wearing the same pajamas, amazingly.  
"Uh...did I get drunk or did I get drunk..." Female Sonic groaned, sitting herself up.  
"Hi," Sonic moaned.  
Female Sonic stared at him, horrified. "Hi..." she answered.  
"Listen..." Sonic began, "did we...erm..."  
"...I can't remember," Female Sonic sighed.  
"I can remember betting you that I could climb the Disco wall using only my lips," Sonic tiredly yawned, "And then...Oh I juggled the snails, didn't I?"  
"Blindfold," Female Sonic nodded.  
"And then..." Sonic went on, rubbing his head. He then paled. "Oh heck, we did, didn't we?"  
It was the wrong time for the two Shadows to glide into the room. "You pieces of filth!" Shadow gasped, "How could you do this?"  
"In my bunk!" Female Shadow took over, "On my sheets! Using my springs! How could you even contemplate doing that...to yourself..." She broke off awkwardly and gave a sideways glance to Shadow.  
He wasn't looking entirely impressed. "Well why break the habit of a lifetime," he muttered.  
"Leave it out!" Female Sonic complained, "I was gonzoed, man, I was out of my skull."  
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sonic asked with a frown.  
"I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what I was doing," she answered simply.  
"Thanks a lot," Sonic sneered.  
Female Shadow was examining herself in the mirror. "I hope you get pregnant," she commented.  
"No offense man, but you're not exactly Mr Difficult to Pull are you?" Female Sonic smiled over the bed, "Talk about push-over."  
"Oh that's rich coming from Miss Yo-yo knickers!" Sonic laughed. His laughter was cut short by Female Shadow hovering over him.  
"I hope you get pregnant you cheap little tart," she repeated firmly, glaring at Sonic.  
"You what?" Sonic grinned.  
Shadow, on the other hand, had stopped short and had widened his eyes. " _Him_?" he slowly spoke, "How can HE get pregnant?"  
"Well if they didn't use precautions..." Female Shadow explained, "He could be up the spout."  
"But it's women who get pregnant!" Sonic protested.  
"Since when!?" his female counterpart laughed.  
"Since always," Sonic answered, starting to feel nervous, "My mother was a woman."  
Shadow had started to look maliciously pleased. "Ooooooh Sonic..." he grinned like a devil, "Oh dear oh dear oh dear...If I'm understanding correctly, it appears that, in THEIR universe, it's the men who give birth to the babies," he explained, "And as we are in _their_ universe, you could very well, possibly, be up the duff, laddy!"  
"Come on, I'm not buying this!" Sonic growled, sitting up and pushing the covers off himself, "This is a wind up!"  
"Don't get emotional, not in your condition!" Shadow quickly gasped, holding out his paws protectively.  
"But it's impossible!" Sonic tried justifying, cuddling the blankets to himself, "I haven't got the..." he gestured to his female counterpart's tummy, "...the equipment, have I?"  
"'Course you have!" Female Shadow countered, "You're in our universe, our physical law applies."  
"Shut up!" Sonic said, shaking his head, "Knuckles, tell me this isn't true."  
Knuckles appeared on the screen, covered in lipstick kisses. " **I'm afraid it is...Mum** ," he revealed.  
Realisation sinking in, Sonic turned accusingly to his female counterpart. "How could you do this to me?" he asked her, betrayed.  
"Do what?"  
"Take advantage of me! Knowing that I was drunk and I didn't have precautions."  
"Listen I assumed you'd taken care of that side of things," Female Sonic told him, "It's the man's responsibility. It's the man who gets pregnant. It's the man who has to suffer the agony of childbirth."  
"Agony!" Shadow cheered, "This gets better and better!" He almost danced around the room in delight, beside himself. Before he had hated this universe - now he was starting to enjoy it.  
"What do you want me to do?" Female Sonic asked, "I'm sorry, okay?"  
"Sorry?" Sonic hissed, "That's it? Sorry? Wham bam, thank you Mister?"  
" **Well there's no point standing around arguing about it** ," Nockles announced, appearing next to Knuckles, " **If it's happened, it's happened**."  
" **Yeah** ," Knuckles agreed, " **We better get back. I fixed the Hop Drive**."  
"No, we can't go now, Knux!" Sonic cried, and pointed to Female Sonic, "She could be the father of my child!"  
" **If we don't go now, we won't be able to get back at all** ," Knuckles told him.  
"Listen," Female Sonic tried saying soothingly, "Just because it's possible for you to get pregnant, it doesn't mean you nessessarily are. You might get lucky!" She then clapped him over the shoulder in a friendly manner as he sighed. At that point, their Scutter came scooting back in, followed by three smaller ones.  
"But then again," Shadow sniggered, "you might not. We'll find out when we get back, won't we Sonic?"

The first stop upon returning to their own universe was a trip to the medical unit. Shadow and Silver were over by the counter as Sonic paced up and down the room, all waiting for the test results to come through.  
"I don't know why I'm going through with this, this is just not possible!" the blue hedgehog was fretting.  
"Why is it not possible?" Shadow asked, the most pleased he'd been all week, "Male baboons have given birth. They were doing that as far back as the 20th century. Cesarian, naturally." He pretended to slice open his stomach with appropriate sound effects. "Still, you'll be in good hands," the hologram continued, "the Scutters can handle a simple cesarian."  
"Scutters!?" Sonic repeated faintly, "I wouldn't let them open a can of beans."  
"You're thinking too negative," Silver chipped in, more than happy to be away from the fox, "Think of all the glorious and beautiful, _wonderous_ things about having children."  
"Like?"  
"...Like when they grow up and leave home!"  
"What colour is it supposed to turn?" Shadow asked, staring down at the strip of white paper in front of him.  
"Blue for not pregnant - which is the colour it's going to turn," Sonic answered automatically, rubbing his blue fur for comfort.  
"And red for pregnant?" Shadow smiled.  
"Yeah."  
Shadow lifted a hand and patted his red flecks. "Come on you reds!" he sang with a smirk, as though he were watching a football match.  
"What colour is it now?" Sonic growled.  
Silver looked over Shadow's shoulder. "Uh, it's still white," he replied, patting his own white fur.  
" **Oi, I've just had a thought** ," Knuckles then said, " **Remember when we broke the light barrier and saw those echoes from the future? And we saw your future self with twin boys**."  
"Right!" Shadow leapt in with shining eyes, "And I said how is it possible to get two babies without a woman on board and you said 'I don't know but it's going to be a lot of fun finding out'! How right you were, Sonic."  
Sonic, on the other hand, had blanched with fear. " _Twins_!?" he shrieked, "No, no way, Shadow, not twins!"  
"Oh yes!" Shadow nodded with a grin, "Big, bonny, strapping, bouncing boys they were. Brilliant blue."  
Silver was smiling merrily, the only one who was neither for nor against what was happening.  
Sonic was starting to feel a little sick but he convinced himself that it was from nerves and had nothing to do with a possible pregnancy.  
"It's changing colour!" Shadow cried and Silver immediately joined him, both hedgehogs stooped over the test paper with eager eyes.  
"What colour?" Sonic demanded, not able to see.  
"Yes it is, it's changing colour!" Shadow repeated.  
"Yeah, but what colour?"  
"It's changing colour!"  
" _What colour!?"_ Sonic shrieked.  
"It's blue for not pregnant, right?"  
"YES!"  
"Oh good news, excellent news, Sonic!" Shadow squealed.  
Relief swept over Sonic's body. "Oh thank Chaos," he breathed. His heart caught in his throat when Silver and Shadow looked up at him with overjoyed faces.  
"We're going to be uncles!"

 _ **Next time...**_

 **The crew discover an abandoned ship and a robotic hedgehog named Metal who is only programmed to serve, something which Shadow tries to take advantage of...**


End file.
